Markets

(Chart 1) It was a tough month for Dynamic Planner benchmark portfolios. Returns ranged from -1.2% (Dynamic Planner 4) to -2.6% (Dynamic Planner 7) (Chart 1), with higher-risk portfolios bearing the brunt of a broad-based equity and fixed-income selloff. The pattern was clear: risk assets suffered, defensive positioning paid. Geopolitical shock dominates The shift came […]

  Financial happiness fell following US-Israel-Iran conflict in March 2026, yet both investment performance and financial happiness rebounded strongly within weeks Speed of recovery suggests investors developing greater resilience to geopolitical shocks, with financial happiness now back above pre-Iran conflict levels Index tracks prior months’ S&P 500 performance with striking consistency The latest findings from […]

Market update – resilience amid uncertainty Markets continued to recover over the month, with stronger returns across the Dynamic Planner benchmarks, reflecting improving investor sentiment and a renewed willingness to engage with risk assets. While geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty remained firmly in the background, markets increasingly appeared willing to look through near-term disruptions and refocus […]

Chart 1 April saw a clear recovery across the Dynamic Planner Benchmarks, with returns increasing alongside risk profiles. DP4 returned 2% over the month, while DP7 rose 5.3% [see chart 1], reflecting a strong equity-led environment in which higher-risk portfolios outperformed. North America remained the largest contributor across most portfolios, supported by continued strength in […]

Recent geopolitical tensions and oil price shocks have triggered significant market volatility, impacting both equities and bonds. Market movements remain highly sensitive to political developments, with uncertainty driving intraday swings and risk sentiment. March delivered one of the sharper geopolitically driven drawdowns this year, with broad-based declines across the Dynamic Planner Benchmarks. Losses scaled with […]

  A conflict without a clear endgame It has been two weeks since the beginning of the joint US-Israel action in Iran, and there is as yet no clear end in sight, nor any coherent articulation of what the objectives and endgame of this action are. The retaliation from Iran and its proxies has been […]

  What advisers need to know The joint US-Israeli military campaign launched against Iran on 28 February 2026 represents one of the most consequential ruptures in Middle Eastern geopolitics since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Remarkably, it is the second such assault in less than nine months: the June 2025 twelve-day war, which included American […]

  AI boom or speculative bubble? Does the US still rule the world? Do government debt levels pose issues ahead? Dynamic Planner, the UK’s leading digital advice platform has shared key discussion points from a joint investment outlook between Royal London Asset Management’s (RLAM) Trevor Greetham, Head of Multi Asset and Abhi Chatterjee, Chief Investment […]

Liberation Day has arrived – and we can’t say we weren’t warned. But the way forward is still unclear.   Even the most experienced Trump watchers, used to a more rhetoric-driven, flip-flop approach, have been caught on the wrong foot. Knowing the incumbent president’s love of the “art of the deal”, trade rhetoric and executive orders […]

By Abhi Chatterjee, Chief Investment Strategist at Dynamic Planner Since September 2024, there has been a marked increase in yields in the Fixed Income markets. Within the UK and its popular press, the move in UK Gilts has featured prominently with lengthy discussions on the whys and therefore, but when placed in the global perspective, […]