Stronger synchronisation of equities and government bonds is also likely to shape the coming years

For a long period, government bonds with a long duration offered the almost per-fect hedge against price losses in risk assets. They generated positive returns and, as safe havens, regularly compensated for part of the losses during stock market cor-rections. This correlation property between government bonds and equities was crucial to the success of static multi-asset approaches. Today, investors struggle not only with the low yield but often with negative expected returns from government bonds. Also, the relationship between government bond and equity performance, which was predominantly negative for many years, is currently rather positive. The current pattern is likely to dominate in the coming years as well. This synchronisa-tion reduces diversification in portfolios, causes difficulties for risk-conscious inves-tors and requires multi-asset investors to take a more flexible, opportunistic ap-proach and seek alternative hedges rather than a static mix of equities and bonds.

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