Markets & views

Welcome to the Winter 2009/10 edition of The Informer.

By now it seems almost routine to observe that the investment environment has been transformed since the publication of the previous issue of The Informer. For better or worse, we are certainly living through interesting times. Thankfully, recent months have been much more positive for most investors, with equity and credit markets forging ahead as the appetite for risk assets recovers. Just as they are supposed to, markets have begun to look through the prevailing economic conditions in anticipation of better times to come. This issue of The Informer delves deeper into this and considers what type of recovery might prevail.

There are certainly many challenges ahead. Governments face difficult decisions when judging how and when support packages should be unwound, what financial sector reforms are desirable and whether central banks can persist in their traditional focus on inflation. Unemployment rates are still rising and debt levels still daunting. Nevertheless, such concerns seem almost conventional when set alongside the fears of systemic financial failure which dominated the headlines late last year.

This leads us to consider what shape the future will take; has a genuine recovery begun or is there more trouble ahead? We also examine UK real estate’s return to favour and take the opportunity to introduce you to our Head of Credit, Mark Wauton, in ‘Meet the Manager’, where he discusses the lessons learned from the economic downturn. This sets the tone for a separate article on bond duration and how it works.

As always, I hope this mix of articles will provide you with some new perspectives and some food for thought as you navigate your own way across the often choppy investment seas!