The investment, pensions and benefits briefings library

After the strong start to the week, partly helped by weak data from China raising expectations of policy stimulus, markets have now taken a different view of further poor economic news from the US and Europe. VIEW SUMMARY

Economies and markets continue to make front page headlines with positive stories seemingly few and far between. Investor sentiment has reflected this backdrop with worrying news undermining confidence and triggering the losses and high volatility we've seen of late. VIEW SUMMARY

At a time when many sectors are shrinking as product providers rationalise their fund ranges one area of the market is well and truly bucking the trend – it only takes a cursory glance at the trade press to see the proliferation of risk rated funds/portfolios. VIEW SUMMARY

Recent data on the health of the global economy is painting a worrying picture for investors. The main concern is that the intractable eurozone crisis is dragging down the performance of not only the core European countries but also China, the bulwark of global demand. Moreover, growth numbers in VIEW SUMMARY

The rationale for creating diversified model portfolios with specific risk and reward characteristics is well known and widely understood. But in a fast moving world are portfolio asset allocations based on the historic behaviour of individual geographies and asset types still relevant? VIEW SUMMARY

As we head closer to RDR implementation, there is a very obvious increase in the number of both funds and discretionary fund management services (DFMs) aligning to risk-profile outcomes and being positioned as core outsourced services for IFAs. VIEW SUMMARY

While the unfolding drama of the Eurozone debt crisis has dominated the headlines in recent weeks, the question of whether or not China’s economy will have a hard landing this year has become more urgent. VIEW SUMMARY

There has been much discussion about how to respond to the escalating bank crisis in the Eurozone. Ted Scott highlights the potential risk of a full scale bank run spreading to other countries from Greece (most likely Spain and Ireland). VIEW SUMMARY