After experiencing a period of economic uncertainty and overcapacity last year, the Citigroup Private Bank Taiwan yesterday expressed a bullish view about the global investment climate.
"In spite of continued uncertainty, 2004 will be the year of `more' [opportunity]," the banks chief global investment strategist Clark Winter told reporters yesterday.
Winter said that there will be more economic growth, commodity price increases, deployment of capital, demand for capital and more economic stimulus this year.
Since the global economy, led by the US, is delivering healthy doses of growth, the Citigroup strategist said that he expects investors to pursue opportunities in capital growth by diversifying capital deployment while shifting away from the pattern of capital preservation used in the past three years.
According to Winter, the returns of hedge funds, which yielded a cumulative return of 55.43 percent, topped other asset investment products including those of Thai equities and US corporate and treasury bonds for the past three years, while most stock equities in Asia plummeted to post negative returns.
However, he added that most Asia and US asset class returns gradually increased last year, with Thai equities topping the others to yield an annual return of 136.68 percent.
Ravi Raju, head of the bank's Asia Pacific & Middle East Investments, further expressed a bullish view towards equities' performance worldwide, with the exception of Japan.
Citing US analysts' estimates, he said that he expects the equities' year-over-year earnings growth may be 22.4 percent last quarter and 13.3 percent this quarter.
In general, Raju expressed a neutral view toward global fixed-income bond performance, while holding a bearish view toward government bonds in the US, UK and Japan.
RSS