SwissLife AM slightly overweight risky assets

In its February asset allocation, SwissLife Asset Managers remains moderately optimistic. ” Our forecasts for the economy, notably on inflation, and equities justify a cautious overweighting of risky assets. We maintain it for equities, real estate as well as high yield and corporate bonds. »

At the economic level, this bank anticipates a slowdown in growth, but with maintenance above long-term averages. As for inflation, there are signs (eg falling shipping costs or rising automotive and semiconductor production) suggesting a peak has been reached. Under these conditions, investors are expecting four key rate hikes from the Fed this year.

With sustained growth and inflation, real assets (stocks and real estate) will perform better than bonds. However, generally high valuations and a less accommodative monetary policy will result in a much lower performance than last year.

After the January drop, “ volatility is expected to remain elevated as markets take their bearings amid rising rates and declining monetary support. An analysis of the historical behavior of financial markets when interest rates rise for one to two years shows that Wall Street is up in the one, three and six month periods before the first rise, with a average of 4% during the previous quarter. However, the first increase is expected next March. A good omen for the coming weeks?

Investing opinion

For our part, we are neutral on equities. A Cac 40 around 7,000 points seems to us to be correctly valued. We estimate that it could fluctuate over the next few weeks between 6,800 and 7,200 points. Reinforcements are possible at the lower end of this channel.