Market insight

• Expected Returns: Escaping the hall of mirrors

  Central banks should stop pandering to market expectations and escape the 'hall of mirrors' that this creates. That's the central theme of Expected Returns 2020-2024, our latest five-year outlook for asset classes, macroeconomic themes and other vital issues for investors.

  

• ReinSTSted: Are new rules reopening the ABS market for insurers?

  Holding asset-backed securities has been a challenge for most insurers since the dislocations of the global financial crisis and introduction of Solvency II. This year, new regulation offers the potential for Solvency II-regulated firms to return to securitised debt investments, says James King, fund manager at M&G.

  

• PIMCO’s Secular Outlook: Dealing With Disruption

  Over the next 3-5 years we see five potential disruptors; China, populism, demographics, technology, and market vulnerability.

  

• PIMCO ESG: Pushing Bond Markets Further

  Given the size of the global fixed income market, corporate and sovereign issuers could play an essential role in sourcing the $3-$5 trillion annually needed to meet the UN SDGs.

  

• IBOR Transition Sparks Search for Deep, Liquid, and Transparent Benchmarks

  There is a dark cloud hanging over IBOR, the interest rate benchmark that will soon meet its demise. Insurers will need to start preparing now for doing business in an IBOR-free marketplace.

  

• Outlook: Flatlining at The New Neutral

  Are markets right to assume the federal funds rate has peaked? Is China the swing factor for growth? Is the trade war passé. These and other questions are answered in PIMCO’s latest outlook.

  

• Expanding impact through the public bond markets

  Tapping public bond markets, and embracing a broad universe of investments beyond green bonds, can help insurers deliver on their impact-investing goals.

  

• Real estate debt: downside protection in the spotlight as market cycle turns

  Real estate debt has many attractions for insurers but as we progress through the market cycle, downside protection is taking centre stage, writes M&G's Duncan Batty

  

• Ethics & alpha: Can investing responsibly enhance returns?

  In recent years researchers from both academia and the asset management industry, drawing on an ever-expanding universe of data, have conducted numerous studies to establish whether such a relationship exists.

  

• Disruptive technologies challenge traditional infrastructure approach

  The future of infrastructure investment requires a dynamic, flexible, open-ended approach that takes into account the innovation in the sector and understands the potential positive impact on returns from emerging technologies.