What will be the big trends of 2010?

Over the last few weeks I have been spending a lot of time leafing through the details of the IMA's annual industry surveys in search of some big new trends.

The 2008 report made for rather depressing reading with the most startling observation being the continued shift from equity to bonds among big institutional mandates. There are lots of quite complex and liability driven reasons for this enormous shift but one of the most interesting has to be that demanding and discriminating institutional buyers have become rightly suspicious of the cult of the equity. The IMA surveys, by contrast, demonstrate the continuing love affair with equities among private investors with bonds representing a paltry average of just over 20% total assets. This in...