“Investors who also invest their money in shares and products with a certain volatility have a stronger resistance to fluctuations in the market, they are not afraid of one or two weaker years or a more difficult period,” says Horia Brown. – Erdey, CEO of Erste Asset Management, is present at the annual conference of fund managers.

“The experience of this instability is what is experienced, assimilated, accumulated and hardened by many investors. We see it in real life when we talk to them: you talk to them differently today than you did 3-4 years ago because there were a few years of higher volatility and there are some lessons that they and we have learned,” says Brown-Erday.

The economist believes that in 2023, we had a fragmented economy, in which the manufacturing sector went into recession (which helped reduce inflation) and the service sector grew strongly, which kept economic growth at a strong level.

“Bracketarily, this can also be seen if we look at the performance of the American economy, which is still firmly anchored in the service sector, compared to the European economy, which is more dependent on the industrial sector; The United States has strong economic growth of nearly 3%, while Europe is stagnant,” explains Brown-Erday.

This break created a certain difficulty in “reading” the market, the economist added.

“With regard to 2024, an election year, we interpret these events as seeing economic policy as probably a little more loose than other political and economic conditions. Governments are likely to continue to run large deficits, although perhaps slightly smaller than in previous years, but not significantly so. Monetary policy, when inflation is falling, will have more courage to lower interest rates than it would otherwise. From this point of view, the constellation of economic policy is favorable both for stocks in general and for risk assets,” says the CEO of Erste Asset Management.

• See JP Morgan’s 2024 forecast here or Market Guide here (also JP Morgan)

Dan Popovici, CEO of OTP Asset Management: 2023 was a very good year for markets where all funds were in the red

“2023 was a very good year for markets where all funds were in the red. On the other hand, we have had a very significant migration of clients to the equity fund space, after they saw returns of over 25%. This saddened me, because I would like it not to be the performance of the fund that makes you invest, but the idea of ​​having an investment plan, wanting to do something for the long term, because you believe in the product that has the Romanian economy behind it, or because, by investing in a product, you choose to invest in innovative companies,” says the CEO of OTP Asset Management.

• See Goldman Sachs’ 2024 predictions here or Black Rock’s predictions here

Dan Daskal, CEO of BT- Asset Management: Our role is to convince as many clients as possible to choose a long-term investment plan

“At the beginning of 2023, the asset management industry was, to put it mildly, quite pessimistic. In the first half of the year, until about April, there was an outflow, but on a much smaller scale than in 2022. With the strengthening of interest rates came a period of stabilization of government bond quotations. A very good local equity market context, lifted by the listing of Hidroelectrica, which made the indices look very good.

The number of new investors has increased significantly and this is due to the regular investment plan launched by our company through which we offer our customers a multi-year savings plan.

I think we all have different challenges in 2024 — some want to launch new products, others want to strengthen existing ones, others want to improve their costs, and so on.

Our common role is still to convince as many customers as possible to come with us to choose a long-term investment plan. This is our role. The potential of the industry is tenfold, I saw that the numbers are very small, from my point of view, they can easily be tripled in the coming years,” the economist believes.

• See ING’s 2024 estimates here or Charles Schwab here

Source photo: © Vlad Ispas | Dreamstime.com