Investors' confidence continues to rise, as UK equities have grown in value over the last year. But investors are being selective about which assets they favour, according to the Lloyds Bank Private Banking Investor Sentiment Index.
Among the favoured investments are UK stocks, as well as perceived safe havens gilts and gold. Confidence in UK equities grew 2% with half the respondents saying they felt confident about the outlook for the FTSE. Lloyds revealed that this was a significant improvement on the Index’s finding a year ago. Confidence towards to gold grew 8% in the month of January thanks to a bounce in the gold price and the performance of gold funds.
In contrast, despite being among the best performing stock markets in 2013, UK investors feel bearish about Japanese equities – a reaction to the Nikkei’s poor start to the year. Emerging markets have also fallen from favour, due to disappointing economic data from China, and currency volatility within Latin American, Eastern Europe and Asian nations.
While an improvement in investor sentiment is positive, the results show how reactionary investor mood is, and how difficult it is to time the market correctly. Good performance leads investors to predict further growth – suggesting investors are missing out on buying assets while they are depressed.
A survey of financial advisers by Barings Asset Management also showed investment professionals are bullish on UK equities, but more encouragingly they also favoured European stocks too.
Sentiment towards UK and European equities is at an all-time high according to the Barings Investment Barometer. Nine out of 10 advisers have a positive outlook on European stocks.
However the survey was not entirely positive about the outlook for UK consumers.
Despite the recent fall in inflation to 2% as at December 2013, more than three quarters of intermediaries believe the UK will experience rising inflation over the next three years, said Barings Rod Aldridge.
“A significant majority report that clients are still concerned about the effect that inflation is having on their cash investments,” he concluded.