- average recommended exposure to equities rose 52.5% from 51% in June
Frothy bubble buying or astute investment strategy ?
- same investors cut bond holdings to lowest since April 2012
- 32.5% vs 35.6% prev
The results of the monthly Reuters poll of 49 fund managers and chief investment officers in the US, UK, Europe and Japan,taken in the past 2 weeks show they bought more stocks in July than at any point in more than two years, speaheaded by a push into Europe and growing confidence in its economic recovery
Faith in the global recovery and relatively accommodative policies from major central banks broadly eclipsed rising geopolitical concerns, although US investors were particularly cautious
US fund managers have been extremely cautious putting almost 5% of their investments into cash, the highest since the US sub-prime crisis began in Jan 2008
European fund managers were notably bullish making their highest allocation to equities since Jan 2011 while UK investment managers pared back their holdings of govt debt in July and pumped more money into stocks befre the exepcted rise in interest rates
Of the three I’m backing the cautious Americans and it will be interesting to see the impact of recent slides on all their August positioning and indeed what they may already have adjusted in recent days.