Join Natalie Tysoe, Portfolio Specialist at Morningstar Wealth, for the Morningstar Investment Outlook 2026, a practical guide designed for financial advisers. This session will explore the key trends shaping this year ahead and provide actionable insights to help you position client portfolios effectively. We’ll discuss how to navigate tariffs, geopolitics, and market volatility, examine the implications of a weaker US dollar, and look at how tech’s capital surge is influencing markets. You’ll also discover ways to unlock value in concentrated markets, strategies for generating income in uncertain conditions, and what the UK outlook looks like beyond the budget.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key strategies to mitigate risks from tariffs, geopolitical tensions, and market volatility.
• Understand the potential implications of a weaker USD in 2026.
• Learn more about how Tech’s capital surge is reshaping the investment landscape.
  

In this session we will explore the psychological concept of *cognitive dissonance* and how it can lead investors to behave in ways that are inconsistent with their long term goals. We follow an investor across key life stages, highlighting how different biases and internal conflicts can influence decision making at each point. The session concludes by considering how a Smoothed Fund may help reduce some of the psychological pressures that contribute to cognitive dissonance, supporting more confident and consistent investment choices.

Learning Objectives

• Explain what cognitive dissonance is and identify how it can influence investor behaviour at different life stages.
• Recognise and describe common behavioural biases that may lead clients to make decisions misaligned with their long term goals.
• Assess how a Smoothed Fund could manage cognitive dissonance and support more consistent investment decision making.
  

This session takes a hard look at areas where multi-asset portfolios can go wrong, challenging assumptions and highlighting pitfalls that can catch users off guard. We’ll look at how current trends shaping the multi-asset landscape today, such as the move from CIP to CRP as well as consumer duty, can leave blind spots to users. We’ll also explore how relying on prior assumptions in an evolving environment can have a detrimental impact on client outcomes, covering areas like investment portfolio design and client expectations. Armed with an understanding of the warning signs, we aim to leave you with information to better understand the role of multi-asset portfolios, to ensure they can remain a solution engine for robust long-term client outcomes.

With stockmarkets concentrated in expensive areas, towering debts looming over bonds, and geopolitical risks multiplying, how can investors manage risk while staying invested? Seeking value helps, even if you do it in simplistic ways.

In this presentation, we analyse how valuations change. No statistical regressions, no oracular return forecasts, simply looking at whether stocks at different prices get richer or cheaper over time. By focusing on price, you can put the odds in your favour.

Valuations take time to change, and they work best when coupled with an understanding of company fundamentals, so active value strategies offer advantages over simplistic ones. To illustrate this, we walk through some opportunities we see in markets today.

By focusing on long-term value, investors can manage risk, achieve proper diversification, and enhance potential long-term returns.

Learning objectives

By the end of this presentation, delegates will be able to:

• Explain how valuations tend to change over time for cheap and rich shares
• Articulate the benefits of assessing price alongside fundamentals
• Distinguish between active and simplistic value strategies
• Illustrate opportunities still available in stockmarkets today
• Enhance clients’ understanding of style diversification within broader portfolios
  

In a rapidly evolving advice landscape, regulatory expectations and client needs are shifting faster than ever. Advisers face growing pressure to demonstrate value, deliver exceptional service, and prepare for future challenges. This session explores how you can stay head. We’ll explore the FCA’s due diligence requirements and what you should be reporting to meet compliance obligations, as well the evolution from Consumer Duty to Consumer Understanding and how technology can enhance client experience while evidencing understanding. Finally, we’ll discuss the way forward, sharing strategies to future-proof your business in a rapidly changing market.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the FCA’s due diligence reporting requirements
• Describe the evolution of Consumer Duty to Consumer Understanding
• Outline practical strategies to future proof your advice business
  

Increasingly customers are seeking IFAs who are able to provide advice during retirement. This is also an area of increasing regulatory scrutiny. Join Hugo Thompson, Multi Asset Product Strategist at BlackRock, as he unpicks fact from fiction when it comes to investing during retirement. What is the regulator expecting? Which investment products are available? How do client needs change after they stop working? All of the above and more will be discussed to help you build a compelling retirement advice proposition.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the changing expectations around retirement
• Compare investment solutions for use in de-cumulation
• Understand how to build a compelling retirement proposition

The US now accounts for over two-thirds of the most widely used global equity indices. Within the US, the tech mega-cap stocks, boosted by significant spending on AI, have been the primary drivers of outperformance and this has led to unprecedented concentration in just a handful of companies. There is ongoing debate about the potential overvaluation of these stocks, but the real concern for long-term investors is the distortion of portfolio diversification. Additionally, the US Dollar’s dominance is facing growing scrutiny and the implications on a multi-asset portfolio can be significant. We will explore whether current equity concentration levels in the US are a cause for concern, how they compare to history and other regions and the role of the US dollar within an increasingly multipolar currency world.

Learning Objectives:

• To evaluate whether global equity indices still fulfil their role to maximise diversification
• To examine the role of the US Dollar within a multi-asset context
• To understand the key considerations multi-asset investors should be aware of