Aegon has launched a new quarterly investment podcast, giving listeners a 10-minute overview of market prospects.
The podcast is hosted by Aegon investment director Nick Dixon and head of portfolio management Richard Whitehall.
Brexit featured heavily in the first podcast of the series, exploring the importance of the UK’s exit from the EU against a backdrop of other significant economic factors, as well as the investment risks and opportunities presented by different Brexit scenarios.
The podcast also looked at the prospects for UK large cap stocks and the lack of attractive valuations across asset classes.
Dixon said: “For UK investors Brexit is very much front of mind, but it should be viewed in the context of other significant developments such as the US/China trade dispute and the slowdown in global growth.
“Unfortunately there are relatively few asset classes offering attractive values at present. US equities are in our view a good example of the richly valued markets we’re experiencing at the moment. If you take US large caps and technology companies in particular, they have done very well over the last six or seven years and they have run ahead of their fundamental worth. To justify the price, they would need to grow very strongly in future and we’re not optimistic that current prices justify the probability of this happening.
“By contrast markets that have underperformed in recent years like the UK and Japan look relatively attractive. Taking the UK as an example, many large cap stocks have well diversified revenues, much of which comes from overseas and while Brexit creates some currency risk for these stocks they still look relatively attractive on a value basis.”
The podcasts will be published shortly after the end of each quarter.
First podcast
The first podcast can be found here and the key discussion points covered include:
· How important is Brexit against a backdrop of other significant economic factors?
· What are the investment risks and opportunities presented by the various Brexit scenarios?
· How few asset classes appear to have relatively attractive valuations – the exceptions being UK and Japanese equities
· The prospects for UK large cap stocks.
