As we look to 2026, markets are shifting rather than settling. Across regions, one common thread stands out: we are investing through a transition. Inflation is lower but not vanquished, policy is easier but not loose, and the AI and capex cycle is reshaping winners and losers at a speed markets have rarely seen before. In this environment, we believe investors will be rewarded less for predicting the macro path, and more for being selective about which businesses – and which parts of the capital structure – they own.
That is where our identity matters. We are true active managers. We are independent thinkers. And we build high-conviction, concentrated portfolios, rather than trying to mirror benchmarks that are increasingly dominated by a narrow group of mega-cap names. Our desks do not share one homogenous investment view, but they do share a common philosophy: focus on quality and resilience, keep valuation discipline, and use active risk management – from carry and duration to convexity – to navigate uncertainty.
In equities, our conviction continues to sit away from the most crowded areas of the market. Both in Europe and Switzerland, selectivity and valuation discipline are creating opportunities where fundamentals are improving but investor attention remains elsewhere. For us, small- and mid-cap companies with pricing power, innovation capacity and strong balance sheets remain one of the clearest ways to access genuine growth without paying mega-cap multiples.
In fixed income, we expect income to do more of the heavy lifting in 2026. Yields remain attractive even after spread compression, and this environment rewards careful credit selection, especially in parts of the market where private credit or cyclical pressures could create dispersion. Our focus is on letting coupon carry work, while keeping the quality bias that has served us well late in the cycle.
Convertible bonds sit naturally across these themes. The resurgence in issuance and renewed breadth have restored the asset class’s usefulness as a convex way to express views on innovation and smaller caps. With more balanced structures and a healthier opportunity set, convertibles allow us to capture asymmetry in a market where the gap between winners and losers is likely to remain wide.
What ties these views together is not a top-down forecast, but a way of investing. We spend our time understanding real businesses, talking to management teams, stress-testing balance sheets and business models, and being disciplined about what we own – and what we are happy to leave to others. We embrace tracking error because we believe conviction is the only way to generate genuinely differentiated returns over time.
The following insights go deeper into each of these themes. Taken together, they reflect how our portfolio managers are positioning today: selectively pro-risk, focused on quality and valuation, and ready to use active, concentrated portfolios to turn a year of transition into a year of opportunity.
