H2 2024

As demonstrated in the recent European elections, populism is in vogue in many developed countries. This is a long-term trend with major macroeconomic consequences.

According to Statista, the 10 largest asset management companies manage approximately 30% of the world’s assets under management as of June 2024. And it’s unlikely that this concentration of assets has fallen over the past two years. How can we explain such a craze for management behemoths?

Jim Simons, nicknamed the “Warren Buffet of algorithms”, passed away last month at the age of 86. Below, we attempt to shed some light on the investment strategy of his Medallion fund, one of the most successful Hegde funds in history.

Key takeaways • We believe global economic growth could soften but will likely remain positive while the disinflation trend should stay in place. This, coupled with monetary and fiscal policy support ahead of the US elections, is creating an attractive backdrop for equity markets in the months ahead. • Within our opportunistic asset-allocation guidance, we recommend clients to go underweight Fixed Income and overweight U.S and European stocks while staying underweight Emerging markets stocks. Commodities and Gold are still useful portfolio diversifiers. We are staying long dollars. • There is one change within our preference grid this month: we increase Government bonds 1-10 years from NEUTRAL to POSITIVE

Nokia's first model reappears in redesigned form. With its simplicity and basic functionality, the "boring phone" offers an escape from the incessant distractions of smartphones. Could this give the brand a new lease of life?

Banking giant HSBC has just embarked on the tokeniszation of gold, enabling the precious metal to be invested and traded digitally.

Thanks to numerous strategic partnerships and visionary local players, Ticino's largest city is establishing itself as a European cryptocurrency and blockchain capital.

Key takeaways • There has been a change of tone in the markets with equities pulling back in April and US 10-year yield moving up 45 basis points over the month, while gold and the dollar soared. • The weight of evidence of our fundamental and market dynamics indicators leads us to remain neutral to positive on equities. While markets could stay choppy for a little while, we believe that the pullback could be contained, and that further equity market weakness is buyable. • Going forward, we want to keep our allocation to Equities close to our strategic asset allocation (SAA) neutral weights. We upgraded our stance on European stocks (from neutral to positive) and downgraded our view on Japanese stocks from positive to neutral. We remain negative in fixed income and downgraded our view on Emerging markets bonds. We have also upgraded our stance on Commodities to positive from neutral. Last but not least, we reduced all currencies by one “notch” vs. USD: EUR, CHF, GBP & EM are reduced down to negative (from neutral) while JPY is down to neutral (from positive).

Hyperbitcoinisation is not just about the growing success of bitcoin. It is actually a scenario in which the digital token becomes the world's dominant currency. Overview.