The Asset Allocator Podcast

Last year saw a spike in the number of fund manager departures, which were at their highest level since Covid.This week David Thorpe, Joseph Wilkins and Dave Baxter have a chat about why that might be and how portfolio managers mitigate this.They also discuss the latest Spot the Dog list of underperforming funds and Fidelity's success at moving into the passive space, with some of its tracker funds now more popular than its storied active funds such as Fidelity Special Situations.The Asset Allocator Podcast is a weekly series aimed at discretionary fund managers, fund selectors and wealth managers, providing insight into the issues that drive investment decisions.To receive the Asset Allocator email in your inbox for free, sign up here.

For better or worse, Donald Trump's first few weeks in the White House have involved a flurry of activity - which the markets have always appreciating some of the new US president's decisions.This week David Thorpe and Dave Baxter make up for Joseph Wilkins' decision to go on holiday by chatting with Gene Salerno, chief investment officer at Kleinwort Hambros, about how he is handling political risk.He also discuss allocating defensively in the current environment and whether weak consumer confidence means we are at an inflection point.The Asset Allocator Podcast is a weekly series aimed at discretionary fund managers, fund selectors and wealth managers, providing insight into the issues that drive investment decisions.To receive the Asset Allocator email in your inbox for free, sign up here.

If volatility has made a comeback, are equal-weight indices the solution to this problem? Or do they present different issues?This week David Thorpe, Dave Baxter and Joseph Wilkins have a chat about the pros and cons of these trackers.They also discuss the case for European equities and whether their time has finally come. And finally they explore DFMs’ preference for gilts over Treasuries.The Asset Allocator Podcast is a weekly series aimed at discretionary fund managers, fund selectors and wealth managers, providing insight into the issues that drive investment decisions.To receive the Asset Allocator email in your inbox for free, sign up here.

With Donald Trump in the White House and China pursuing its AI ambitions, it seems like 2025 is going to be a volatile year.This week David Thorpe and Joseph Wilkins have a chat with Eren Osman, head of investment management at Arbuthnot Latham, to discuss how he is managing portfolios through this volatility.They also discuss whether the antics of the new Trump administration are changing the calculation for gilts versus Treasuries and whether the launch of Deepseek's chatbot has affected Osman's exposure to the semiconductor industry.The Asset Allocator Podcast is a weekly series aimed at discretionary fund managers, fund selectors and wealth managers, providing insight into the issues that drive investment decisions.To receive the Asset Allocator email in your inbox for free, sign up here.

Selecting a benchmark can be a thorny issue for portfolio managers since it is what their performance is judged against.This week David Thorpe and Joseph Wilkins are joined by Shanti Kelemen, chief investment officer at M&G Wealth, to discuss this issue.They discuss the process she uses, the common pitfalls and what the main challenges are in comparing one range of portfolios against another.The Asset Allocator Podcast is a weekly series aimed at discretionary fund managers, fund selectors and wealth managers, providing insight into the issues that drive investment decisions.To receive the Asset Allocator email in your inbox for free, sign up here.

This week's stock market rout following the emergence of China's DeepSeek has up-ended expectations that stocks like Nvidia would continue powering upwards uninterrupted.This week David Thorpe and Joseph Wilkins are joined by Paul Flood, head of mixed-asset investing at Newton, to discuss the turbulent past few days.They also discuss the challenges of investing for income and his thoughts on Saba's bid for control over several investment trusts.The Asset Allocator Podcast is a weekly series aimed at discretionary fund managers, fund selectors and wealth managers, providing insight into the issues that drive investment decisions.To receive the Asset Allocator email in your inbox for free, sign up here.

Gam allocates about a third of its portfolio to US equities which, even in a market where exposure to Wall Street is rising, is a punchy position.This week we are joined by Julian Howard, chief multi-asset investment strategist at Gam, to discuss why the company has taken such a position.He also chats with Joseph Wilkins and David Thorpe about volatility following the return of Donald Trump as US president and the role of asset allocation versus fund selection.The Asset Allocator Podcast is a weekly series aimed at discretionary fund managers, fund selectors and wealth managers, providing insight into the issues that drive investment decisions.To receive the Asset Allocator email in your inbox for free, sign up here.

Through the recent peaks and troughs, average exposure to Japanese equities in our database has been relatively unmoved at about 3.5 per cent.But Stewart Smith, head of MPS at RSMR, has the highest exposure in our database at more than 8 per cent.In this week's episode Joseph Wilkins and David Thorpe have a chat with him about why he's so keen on Japanese equities and why he's recently been cutting his UK exposure.They also discuss why he prefers to take an active approach to fixed income, even with government bonds.The Asset Allocator Podcast is a weekly series aimed at discretionary fund managers, fund selectors and wealth managers, providing insight into the issues that drive investment decisions.To receive the Asset Allocator email in your inbox for free, sign up here.

The Asset Allocator Podcast is back for 2025 and this week David Thorpe, Joseph Wilkins and Dave Baxter kick off the new year by discussing the active US equity funds which managed to outperform the market in 2024 and they weigh up the investment case for China versus India.They also discuss how DFMs can compete in an increasingly crowded market.The Asset Allocator Podcast is a weekly series aimed at discretionary fund managers, fund selectors and wealth managers, providing insight into the issues that drive investment decisions.To receive the Asset Allocator email in your inbox for free, sign up here.