Asia ex-Japan has surpassed Europe as the region most likely to provide the greatest upside for equity investors for 2016, according to the survey
About 37% of this year’s participants in the firm’s Asian Investment Conference chose Asia ex-Japan to be the most likely region to outperform this year, followed by 28% for the US and 24% for Europe. Only 5% selected Japan.
By comparison, when the same survery was conducted in 2015, 45% of respondents selected Europe.
In 2016, 42% of the attendees believe that the Asia-Pacific index will rise by 10%, while 43% expect it to be flat. India was the market that respondents were most overweight on, followed by Australia, and China H-shares.
The strongest underweight sentiment was for Pakistan, Malaysia, Japan and China A-shares.
At the sector level, healthcare is the most liked sector, followed by the Internet, while energy and financials are the least liked sectors, the firm added.
About 1,200 institutional investors, hedge funds and high net worth individuals, which collectively hold $18trn in assets under management, attended the conference.
Two biggest risks
The firm said 54% of participants selected China’s growth concerns and currency risks as the two biggest risks for global markets in 2016, followed by geopolitical issues (36%) and rising debt defaults (32%).
Regarding views on China currency’s risks, more than two-thirds of the survey participants expect the USD/CNY to be fixed at between 6.5 and 7.0 by year-end, 13% believe it to be between 7.0 and 8.0, and 14% believe it to be between 6.1 and 6.4.
