Join Anthony Walters as he presents some of the firms’ recent findings on the growing and dangerous trend of extreme US equity concentration within UK MPS portfolios.

Learning objectives:

1. What is happening in the MPS landscape

2. Why it is happening

3. How this poses risks to you and your clients.

4. What we can do about it

As we look into the horizon, it’s clear that investing conditions in 2025 will be very different to what they were 2024. We will present insights from across our 400 strong Research and Investment Team. Giving you the context you need to support your clients in this shifting investment environment; in doing so preventing them making decisions which could have long lasting consequences on their ability to reach their goals.

Learning outcomes:

• Understand the current investing environment

• Understand where we believe the key investment opportunities for 2025 can be found

• How can investors find returns in a falling rate environment

In this session we discuss one of market’s open secrets: retail investors tend to underperform ‘institutional’ investors such as sovereign wealth funds and endowment funds. So what is the key to their success? We analyse the strategies used by high performing investors to meet and exceed their investment objectives, and consider how these same techniques can be incorporated into the investment portfolios run by IFAs.

Learning objectives:

• Identify return differences across investors

• Understand four drivers of long-term investment success

• Apply the keys to success in Multi-Asset portfolios

In our workshop we’ll be talking through what we’ve learnt in the three years since we partially-unitised our MPS offering through the launch of our Building Blocks. We look at what prompted the change, what it’s meant for portfolio turnover and how truly active management enabled us to take advantage of opportunities over that time, as well as looking at current positioning.

Learning objectives:

• Attendees will understand the rationale for a partially unitised approach

• Understand what components to look out for when seeking a truly active, dynamic and scalable solution for your clients

• Understand latest positioning

This session will identify some potential unappreciated risks and even more unappreciated opportunities in support of taking a valuation driven approach.

Sharing insight in

- How valuation can be a useful investment ally

- Why market concentration could potentially fuel risk

- Highlight valuation driven investment opportunities into 2025

- Covering all the bases (or at least more of them) in a truly diversified approach

Learning outcomes:

1. Enhance understanding of using valuation in making investment decisions.

2. Share understanding of current risks and opportunities in markets.

3. Give insight through examples on how multi-asset investing principles might support successful investor outcomes.

In markets, great expectations have a tight relationship with great returns--if it's past returns you care about. If you're focused on the future, the reverse is true. When expectations are high, so is risk. As we look across markets today, we see all sorts of things that only make sense with great expectations: valuations in the US, crowding in stockmarkets, faith in low inflation, and concentrations in adviser portfolios, to name just a few.

Looking at individual assets provides a different perspective. While expectations are high in some areas, they are depressed in others. For independent-minded investors, the neglected parts of markets provide opportunities to improve diversification, reduce risk, and enhance long-term returns.

Learning objectives:

• Understand the types of expectations embedded in stockmarket prices

• Articulate the link between those expectations and future returns

• Explain the relationships between debt, inflation, and bond returns

• Distinguish between name diversification and fundamental diversification