Investment Insights

Listen to this Talking heads podcast with Edward Lees, co-head environmental strategies group, and chief market strategist Daniel Morris. They discuss opportunities ranging from US infrastructure and securing supply chains for electric vehicle batteries to EV software and residential solar panels. Lees warns that funding support for under-pressure households should target the beneficiaries of high oil and gas prices without jeopardising the capital spending needed to speed up the energy transition.

Listen to this Talking heads podcast with Vanessa Ritter, Head of Global Loans as she discusses the current environment and perspectives for the global loan market. She outlines the current opportunities and rational for investing in this asset class.

Listen to this Talking heads podcast with Anaïs Boussie, our senior European economist as she discusses the outlook and perspectives for 2023 and 2024. She outlines the policy measures she expects the ECB and national governments to employ in coping with the consequences of the energy crisis and weak economic growth.

As a broad asset class underlying the full spectrum of economic activity and a non-cyclical slant, infrastructure debt has attributes that stand out for investors. One key point is that many of the services financed with these bonds are indexed, protecting cash flows from rising inflation. Also, the debt typically has floating rate coupons that are adjusted when interest rates rise.

Senior investment specialist for global equities Ramon Esteruelas briefs chief market strategist Daniel Morris on four books he has read on climate change. The books discuss the relevance of climate change science and the reliability of projections, the availability of adaptive and mitigating solutions and breakthroughs, the long road to net zero, and the need for a rethink on growth.

Until recently, humanity has relied on chemical solutions to address its biggest challenges. For example, our ability to grow food, to defend livestock against disease and to safeguard human health, all depend in part on chemical solutions. Today is no different. Yet resistance to chemicals is rising rapidly, exacerbated by climate change and ecosystem degradation. In the second of this series, Ulrik Fugmann and Edward Lees, co-heads of our Environmental Strategies Group, talk to Andrey Zarur, CEO and co-founder of GreenLight Biosciences, about how his company is using RNA technology to create a new generation of chemical free pest control methods. They consider the benefits of such innovations including enhanced food and biodiversity security, as well as the growing role investors can play in this area. The uncapped impact series brings you up close and personal with our Environmental Strategies Group and businesses that, regardless of their size, are making a big impact.

Listen to this Talking heads podcast with senior equities portfolio manager Jonathan Barnett and chief market strategist Daniel Morris as they discuss the prospects for secular growth in an industry that enables users to save on costs, access real-time business data, tailor their customer experience and generally improve efficiency. As Jonathan points out, for a company to be best-in-class these days, it needs to have best-in-class IT systems and that includes cloud computing.

Listen to this Talking heads podcast with Christophe Montcerisier, head of real estate debt, and chief market strategist Daniel Morris. They discuss the absence of a direct and immediate link between higher interest rates and the performance of real estate debt and the defensive characteristics of the asset class. Among other things, its solidity derives from some of the pandemic-induced structural changes, including a shift in office use and greater demand for suburban properties.

Listen to this Talking heads podcast with senior portfolio managers David Favier and Olivier Boutoille and Daniel Morris, chief market strategist. They firstly discuss the current market environment before focusing on the advantages of investing in these floating rate instruments that offer varied risk/returns profiles for investors.

Listen to the Talking heads podcast with Laurent Gueunier, head of real assets, SME lending and structured finance, as he discusses the ins and outs of lending to small and medium-sized companies with chief market strategist Daniel Morris. Resilient sectors currently on his radar include technology, healthcare, business services and education.

Listen to this Talking heads podcast with portfolio manager Agne Rackauskaite as she discusses the challenges with Andrew Craig, co-head Investment Insights Centre. Beyond the war in Ukraine, the challenges ahead range from population growth to climate change. Agne highlights the benefits of a shift to more resource-efficient plant-based foods, better packaging and sophisticated irrigation and harvest technologies – and the related investment opportunities.

In this Talking heads podcast, Pierre Moulin, global head of products and strategic marketing, discusses the upcoming “positive revolution in the way investment products are distributed” with chief market strategist Daniel Morris.

Listen to this Talking heads podcast with portfolio managers Claire Mehu and Anne Froideval as they discuss the merits of this asset class with chief market strategist Daniel Morris. Listed real estate has a relatively low correlation with broad market equities over the longer term. Other important attributes are the prospect of limited supply in an already tight market and the value-enhancing effects of regulations targeting the sustainability of buildings.

Listen to this edition of Talking heads as Delphine discusses the growing appreciation of these social factors with chief market strategist Daniel Morris. Rather than a focus on solutions, she highlights the relevance of assessing company practices, i.e. how a company interacts with stakeholders such as employees, consumers, suppliers and society. She argues that doing well in areas such as workforce relations and worker education benefits a company's long-run financial performance.

Listen to this Talking heads podcast with Pam as she talks to chief market strategist Daniel Morris about the secular drivers of demand and the prospects for technological companies.

Private equity impact investing offers investors access to an attractive asset class that can help diversify a portfolio and earn attractive returns. In addition, it offers an extra-financial component by enabling them to contribute – and help finance – solutions to pressing social and environmental problems from access to healthcare to promoting a circular economy.

US small-cap stocks are trading near 10-year lows on various metrics, which disregards their typical resilience in periods of rising interest rates and slower economic growth.

Talking heads - China to deliver on growth in 2022 by BNP Paribas Asset Management

Foreign exchange (FX) markets can be viewed as a derivative asset in that they tend to be driven by volatility in other asset markets. Since 2015, most of the leading currencies have traded in relatively confined ranges. With volatility rising in equity, bond and commodity markets, there are good reasons to expect a new regime in currency markets.

Value investing remains a worthwhile approach, even after an extended period of underperformance. A rebound has now set in that looks sustainable. Rising interest rates should be supportive of the value style and value still looks cheap relative to growth.

Inflation has bounced back vigorously from its pandemic-era lows: The headline rate for the US consumer price index has reached a 40-year high, while in the eurozone, the headline rate for the harmonised index of consumer prices is at its highest in 20 years. What does this mean for investors?

To help multi-asset portfolios cope with the geopolitical shock of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a move into cash can be useful. At BNP Paribas Asset Management, we have implemented such an approach to ride the recent market volatility and use bounces to sell assets whose fortunes have now changed and build or expand other, more defensive positions at attractive prices.

Global bond markets already faced challenging times before the conflict in Ukraine, but they at least had a clear expectation to work with: the prospect of firm central bank action to tackle rising inflation. Geopolitical developments have upended the calculus, undermining inflation and growth forecasts and weakening the fundamentals across the board for the foreseeable future.

Global markets have seen wide swings as concerns over tighter supplies and crimped trade in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused investors to head for safe havens away from risk assets. However, Guy Davies, chief investment officer for fundamental active equities, advises against impulsive action and argues for a focus on cash flows when picking promising stocks.

Heightened market volatility and uncertainty over the pace at which the ECB will unwind its bond purchases are the main tests investors in European corporate bonds have to contend with currently. Mitigating factors such as robust earnings, strong cash positions and low defaults could be negated by concerns the central bank might need to take tougher action to contain inflation.

Investing in water-related stocks means tapping into a multi-decade opportunity for growth and innovation. Demand in this segment stretches across the breadth of the economy – from tackling ageing water infrastructure to ensuring healthy drinking water and efficient waste water treatment.

Our Environmental Strategies Group talk to businesses that, regardless of their size, are making a big impact. In the first of this series we speak to John Berger, CEO of Sunnova Energy International, a residential solar and energy storage company, about the energy transition and the role investors can play in fighting climate change.

Chinese equities look well set to confront the challenges that Omicron, stricter regulation and moderating growth will bring. Revised earnings expectations and valuations mean their second-half prospects are brighter. Looser fiscal and monetary policies have the potential to provide a further uplift for sentiment.

In a contrarian call, our emerging market debt team sees appealing opportunities in EM bonds. Specifically in those markets where inflation is likely to peak ahead of developed markets in which investors are having to adjust to the prospect of higher real yields. EM segments that were oversold late last year also represent areas worth investor attention as a recovery takes hold.

The prospect of a momentous pivot in US monetary policy with gradual withdrawal of the generous provision of liquidity has left markets pondering over valuations. Investors face a challenging year in which they will need to search for assets suited to a new inflationary regime. On our Talking heads podcast, Daniel Morris, chief market strategist, and Andrew Craig, co-head of the Investment Insights centre, discuss the outlook for fixed income, the promise of emerging market debt (and currencies), the prospects for corporate bonds, and the areas of – longer-term – interest once equity valuations have normalised.

To tackle poverty, climate change and improved access to, for example, education, central banks and governments need to rethink fiscal policy and the impact of deficit spending. Trillions of US dollars are required to achieve these goals. Alex Bernhardt, global head of sustainability research, talks about how it could be done.

At first sight, tighter US monetary policy and stubbornly high US inflation does not seem an ideal mix for bonds. There's a lot more to it than that, argues James McAlevey, head of multi-sector fixed income. By embracing a broad opportunity set, investors can benefit from the potential for attractive risk-adjusted returns offered via active allocation.

The set-up for financial markets is more challenging in 2022, especially for core government bonds and fully valued equities, given the prospect of higher interest rates. In our new Talking heads podcast, Maya Bhandari gives her analysis of what this means for asset allocation.

Stronger economic fundamentals and vaccination progress mean the 2022 outlook for Asian equities, and more broadly global emerging market equities, is rosier now than it was at this time a year ago, argues Zhikai Chen, head of Asian equities.

Leaving behind a momentous year marked by new phases of the pandemic and by sputtering efforts to re-start the global economy, we look ahead to 2022. Can we overcome the effects of issues such as disrupted supply chains and shifts in consumer demand? How can investors navigate the ‘rapids' that will characterise the next stages of the economic recovery?

The recent UN climate change conference in Glasgow has if anything brought a broader focus on environmental issues and added to the growing awareness and momentum behind the need for positive change, argue Edward Lees and Ulrik Fugmann of the Environmental Strategies Group. Here they identify promising sectors and present their approach to sustainable investing.

The results of the recent COP26 climate change conference fall into the glass half full, glass half empty category. The onus now is on greater efforts to adapt to higher global temperatures as work on mitigating the temperature rise continues, says Alex Bernhardt, global head of sustainability research.

Confronted with low, but rising rates and frothy equity valuations, large investors are having to look elsewhere for investments offering both attractive long-run returns and modest to low volatility. Julien Halfon, head of pensions and corporate solutions, discusses the appeal of investing in private markets and harvesting the illiquidity premium while incorporating ESG selection criteria.

It has been a challenging year for investors in emerging markets – equities have lagged their developed market counterparts, EM debt has delivered a mixed performance. Covid outbreaks have hampered the economic recovery, while questions have arisen over China's role as the engine of growth for EM exporters.

Globalisation, regulation and deregulation, digitalisation and innovation are playing an important role in reshaping economies, sectors and industries and these megatrends are creating thematic investment opportunities for investors. Koye Somefun, head of multi-asset solutions, sets out the characteristics of this approach and discusses the criteria investors should look at.

At first glance, bond markets these days may look like deserts – there is little or no yield on offer with large patches appearing barren or even offering only negative yields. That is to ignore a plethora of opportunities, argues Jean-Paul Chevé, head of the Fixed Income Insurance Team within the Specialty Fixed Income Product Group.

Investors with China exposure, or an appetite for it, face a raft of issues ranging from slower growth, which may or may not be condoned by Beijing, to toughened and expanded clampdowns on sectors. Add in persistent Sino-US tensions over geopolitics and a revitalised focus on greater common prosperity and this cocktail begs the question: How best to judge the outlook for China? Chi Lo, Senior Market Strategist APAC, puts the latest developments into context, voicing his confidence that sentiment towards the world's second-largest economy will improve.

Convertible bonds are hybrid instruments combining bond and equity characteristics. As a result, they offer some equity upside, but with bond-like protection on the downside. If we are at the start of a cycle of rising interest rates, the option investors in these nominal assets (bonds) hold to convert to real assets (equities) could prove invaluable.

The S&P 500 stock index ended September down by 4.8%, its first monthly drop since January and the largest fall since March 2020. Vincent Nichols, investment specialist for US equities, reviews recent events and the outlook for US stocks.

At the centre of a pandemic-induced boom, stern regulation efforts and forays into new turf, the technology sector is making almost daily headlines and requires robust research to separate the possibilities from the pitfalls, argues Pamela Hegarty, lead portfolio manager with a focus on information technology and communication services.

Uncertainty over the macroeconomic landscape and the outlook for monetary policy currently combine with an awareness among investors that by many measures, valuations in public markets are on the high side. David Bouchoucha, head of our private debt and real assets team, talks about the characteristics that make private debt an attractive alternative.

What will be the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for the food and agriculture sector? How is the transition towards more sustainable food production and consumption affected? Agne Rackauskaite, co-portfolio manager of Impax Asset Management's sustainable food strategy, gives investors her view on the post-pandemic outlook.

It is a win-win for companies to target the social aspects of doing business, next to environmental responsibility and proper governance, and it can be so for investors as well, argues senior portfolio manager Maria Luz Diaz Blanco.

In mid-June, Fed Chair Jay Powell pulled the rug from beneath the reflation trade by suggesting current inflation pressures were perhaps not transitory after all. Fixed income markets promptly reversed course with 10-year US Treasury yields last week trading as low as 1.25% after ending the first quarter at 1.70%. In this week's podcast, Olivier de Larouziere, chief investment officer fixed income, explains what remains of the 2021 reflation trade. Listen to the podcast with Olivier de Larouziere, chief investment officer fixed income.

While many parts of the economy had to shut down as the coronavirus pandemic raged, the lights stayed on, water flowed from taps and internet connections buzzed. The crisis has highlighted the importance of the underlying infrastructure and, as Karen Azoulay explains, it was a useful reminder of the solidity of infrastructure debt as an asset class. Listen to the podcast with Karen Azoulay, head of infrastructure debt.

Addressing ecosystem restoration is just as pressing as tackling CO2 emissions and can generate billions of dollars of investment opportunities, as Ulrik Fugmann and Edward Lees, co-heads of the Environmental Strategies Group, explain.