Year 2024 will provide the answers to the big questions of 2023 including growth, inflation, central banks, geopolitics, elections and policies. 

 

These will be catalysts for the year and clues for the future, said Maurice Gravier, Group Chief Investment Officer at Emirates NBD Group at a media roundtable. 

 

“Central banks, who outright dominated markets for 15 years, should become less radical, more predictable, less prominent. With pivotal changes also materialising in the international order and in technology, the investment landscape is definitely rejuvenated,” he said releasing his global investment outlook for 2024 themed “The Year of Answers”. 

 

Investment strategy

Gravier and his team presented their investment strategy against a positive backdrop of considerable gains, after focused long-term strategic asset allocation to enhance portfolios in 2023. 

 

Gravier commented: “We start 2024 with a positioning shaped by a combination of fundamental and behavioural analysis. After the year-end rally, we appreciate safe sources of income. We are cautious with some expensive and crowded asset classes. 

 

“We are slightly defensive, but this is not an outright risk aversion: we see value in selected stocks and bonds, even in the high yield segment. As data progressively lifts the veil on the state of the world in 2024, we are prepared to be tactically active and more selective than ever.

 

Tactical opportunities

“At the allocation level, valuation will help identify tactical opportunities through volatility. But it is also about selection: less directional markets will unlock differentiation between names, as opposed to passive replication of indices which have arguably become unbalanced. Risk-adjusted returns should not be exciting in 2024, but we believe that active management will help: alpha over beta, portfolio management over speculative trading.”

 

Gravier said: “Volatility will remain significant, especially as markets have just unanimously embraced, and generously priced-in, an ultra-consensual scenario. The scenario will be questioned by data, and geopolitical risk should matter more than last year. The upside potential for some asset classes is limited in 2024, while their vulnerability to risk-aversion is significant. Bottom-line, we would be happy with mid-single digit returns in 2024 for our diversified portfolios.”--TradeArabia News Service