Global Wealth Investment Playbook

In our Q1 2026 Global Wealth Investment Playbook, we remain constructive on the year ahead, while we recognize that the cycle is more advanced. Credit losses are normalizing from extremely low levels and more of the productivity gains are now being reflected in capital market assumptions. At the same time, elevated starting valuations, tighter spreads, and a persistently positive stock–bond correlation continue to flatten the efficient frontier, reducing the effectiveness of traditional portfolio diversifiers. There are also technological gains across AI that we still need to understand better. Against this backdrop, we think it is the moment to high-grade portfolios by staying invested while emphasizing quality, diversification, and capital efficiency through sound portfolio construction.

Overall, in private markets we continue to favor assets with more controllable outcomes:

• We prioritize collateral-backed cash flows and inflation-linked income streams across Infrastructure, Real Estate, and Asset-Based Finance, where contractual income and real-asset linkage can help preserve capital and improve diversification.
• We also continue to view Private Equity as offering compelling long-term return potential.  Importantly, though, executing on disciplined value creation strategies as well as gaining exposure to durable secular themes are now more important than ever.

Ultimately, our goal is for this quarter’s Global Wealth Investment Playbook to serve as a practical roadmap for financial advisors, one that helps them build portfolios designed to compound over time, not just perform in the next quarter. For more detail see our full Outlook for 2026 or the In Brief version.