• Home
• /
• Markets

Global funds returning to euro zone equities

LONDON - Global investors are more bullish on euro zone equities than they have been since mid-2011, with new crisis-fighting plans soothing worries over the region’s sovereign debt, a fund managers’ survey showed on Tuesday.

Investors also took a more optimistic view on global growth and have overall edged towards riskier assets in September, but stubbornly high levels of cash show scepticism is still high and investors are not “all-in” on risk, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch (BofAML) said in its asset allocation survey.

“Policy support from the ECB is reflected in the first global overweight European equities since April 2011 and for the first time since April 2011 the European debt crisis is not investors’ number one tail risk fear, it’s concerns over the U.S. fiscal cliff,” said John Bilton, European Investment Strategist at BofAML.

A net 1 percent of global investors now own more euro zone equities than their standard benchmark, turning overweight, albeit slightly, from a net 12 percent underweight in August, the survey of 253 investors with $681 billion under management showed.

In particular, investors have sharply reduced their underweight on euro zone banks to 25 percent from 43 percent in August.

There is scope for the rally in European equities to continue but positioning is still lagging investors’ view on how undervalued European stocks are, Bilton said, with worries over the economy weighing on asset allocation.

The survey, which was conducted Sept. 7-13, after the European Central Bank outlined its bond-buying plans but before the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank announced a third round of quantitative easing, shows that global profit expectations fell, with investors worried about the risks of stagflation.

“While it seems central banks have gone all in, investors are not. Cash levels remain pretty high,” Bilton said. Cash was only slightly trimmed to 4.5 percent of portfolios from 4.7 percent in August.

Investors were overweight commodities for the first time in five months and consumer discretionary reached its highest overweight level on record.