Sentiment regarding the asset class is now the lowest since June 2013, though it is still in positive territory, meaning fund managers expect modest overall returns during the coming year. European equity sentiment has now come down considerably for the third month in a row, just like fund managers’ expectations of US equities actually. Though both markets have shown similarly dismal performance over the past 2 months, the drop in sentiment has been less dramatic for US equity markets.
Switch to emerging markets
Fund managers seem to have finally started to listen to fund selectors, who have been telling our researchers since this spring that they are planning to step up their exposure to emerging market equities. EM equity return expectations have now surpassed those for European and US equities for the first time since March 2013.
EM equities are not the most popular asset class with fund managers yet though. They still have most faith in Japanese equities, with almost 80% of them expecting returns to exceed 5% over the next 12 months.
Pan-European emerging market equity sentiment
