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Fixed income is firmly back in favour with investors and wealth managers, however there are disagreements over the best part of the market in which to find returns.Retail investors have invested £4bn into fixed income funds since the start of the year, according to data from the Investment Association, compared with £4.7bn withdrawn on a net basis in 2022.Last month, AJ Bell’s chief executive, Michael Summersgill told the FT said he had never before seen the volume of fixed income purchases happening currently.Bonds are also getting more attention from money managers, said...

Markets have been too negative on global economic prospects but the UK could be a laggard when it comes to a recovery, economists and investors have suggested.Steven Bell, chief economist at Columbia Threadneedle, said consumer confidence had been very low in Europe and the UK due to concerns about the impact of higher energy costs, but could rise over the year - albeit more swiftly on the continent than in the domestic UK market.According to Bell, energy subsidies mean the issue has not had as profoundly negative an impact as originally feared. Therefore,...

The Financial Conduct Authority boss has said the country has to compete for investment, including from UK pension funds, arguing that this competition is about far more than regulation.Speaking at the Global Investment Management Summit today (March 29), Nikhil Rathi, chief executive of the FCA said there has been a focus recently on the sharp decline in UK pension and insurance funds investment in UK equities.  He said: “Reasons for a fall in defined benefit allocations from over 50 per cent in UK equities in 1992 to less than 2 per...

Actively managed equity funds failed to perform relative to passive mandates in 2022 according to Morningstar, but the tide could be about to turn, according to that company’s European chief investment officer Mike Coop.Coop says 2022 was driven by two "generational events", the first being the end of the low interest rates era when Russia invaded Ukraine, and the second being the end of the innovation bubble in investment markets.But while he feels those are events of unusual significance in investment markets, he feels investors can learn lessons from recent history. He...