Economic Conditions Snapshot, September 2016: McKinsey Global Survey results

Global views hold steady

Three months after the Brexit referendum, a decision that took much of the world by surprise, the latest results indicate that respondents’ views on the global economy have changed little. As in our previous survey, conducted a few weeks before the vote, executives are most likely to say that global conditions have stayed the same in the past six months and that conditions will remain steady in the months ahead (Exhibit 4).

http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/economic-conditions-snapshot-september-2016-mckinsey-global-survey-results?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1609

Global Asset Allocation Shifts

We show that global asset reallocations of U.S. fund investors obey a strong factor structure, with two factors accounting for more than 90% of the overall variation. The first factor captures switches between U.S. bonds and equities. The second reflects reallocations from U.S. to international assets. Portfolio allocations respond to U.S. monetary policy, most prominently around FOMC events when institutional investors reallocate from basically all other asset classes to U.S. equities. Reallocations of both retail and institutional investors show return-chasing behavior. Institutional investors tend to reallocate toward riskier, high-yield fixed income segments, consistent with a search for yield.
https://www.bis.org/publ/work497.pdf