These forecasts are in-line with the managers’ expectations for global equity performance over the next 12 months. Some 68% said the MSCI World index would rise between 5-10% over the coming year. Some 13% said 10-15% while 5% expected negative returns.
This month managers were much more neutral on investment style. There was a big dip in sentiment towards large companies and also towards growth firms. Some 54% said large companies would outperform th
eir smaller counterparts, down from 72% in November. Meanwhile only 18% said growth firms would outperform value compared with 32% last month.
Asia excluding Japan was expected to be the best performing region over 2005. Europe excluding the UK followed closely behind in second place. Over half of managers said America would be the worst performing region. Sentiment on the American currency was also poor.
Dollar woes
Despite recent weakening almost 70% said the dollar would be the worst performing currency in the next year. The euro came a distant second with 17%.
This theme of the survey this month was fund group disclosure. Fund management groups viewed websites as the key medium for communicating with investors. Some 44% said websites were the most important media for reaching investors while 16% said monthly letters and 15% said printed annual reports.
Only 24% provide information on how much fund managers have invested in their own funds. Of the 76% who do not report this information none planned to change their ways and introduce the information in 2005.
About half said that investors have unrealistic expectations regarding performance and risk. Lack of information appears to be one of the factors behind this problem. Overall managers said details on the risk of a fund was the area of information that could be improved the most. Style and strategy information of a fund also ranked highly.
Morningstar’s European offices conducted the survey from December 6th-13th. Some 40 fund groups from 14 countries participated. On average they each managed €50billion (£35 billion) and offered 73 retail funds.