Introduction
For this mid-year outlook, the theme continues to be the attractiveness of investments beyond cash including fixed income, equities and alternatives. We give you our Institute perspective for the second half of 2023, with our ongoing conversations with our investment teams driving the narrative. The major highlights are:
- Fixed income deserves a good deal of attention—delivering income is back.
- Diversification and income may be enough motivation to move some holdings further out the US yield curve.
- Equities should benefit from a taming of inflation and earnings optimism.
- Following consecutive quarters of falling US corporate profits, the outlook for earnings is beginning to brighten.
- A US recession remains the overwhelming consensus view and hence is to some extent already accounted for in market prices—it is likely to come later and be shallower than its predecessors.
- Our risk worry list includes deep recession, geopolitical tensions, energy shocks and soggy returns.
In this issue, we follow our outlook with some useful exhibits from our investment teams as they provide primary points they are making when discussing opportunities for the rest of the year.
Stephen Dover, CFA
Chief Market Strategist,
Franklin Templeton Institute
