With politics even less certain than usual and interest rates outlooks seeming to vary by the day, it must be very tempting for allocators to place their client capital with global equity mandates to essentially outsource the equity asset allocation.

And a glance at our allocations database does point in this direction, with the average exposure to global equity funds increasing to 8 per cent, from 6 per cent a year ago. 

The house with the largest exposure, indeed large enough to skew the average, is Downing at 27 per cent, while One Four Nine at 25 per cent, while Pacific Asset Management is at 22.5 per cent. 

Some of the larger players in the sector, such as Brewin Dolphin, with just 2 per cent allocated to global equity mandates, and Quilter Wealthselect at just over 4 per cent, help skew the distribution in the opposite direction,  

Several of the buyers we monitor have zero allocated to global equity funds, among them AJ Bell and Abrdn. 

The most owned global equity fund among the allocators we monitor continues to be Fundsmith Equity, which appears in nine of the portfolios we monitor and has picked up a new buyer this year. 

In performance terms, it has now underperformed relative to the sector over one, three and five years. That’s probably not surprising as the fund isn’t really positioned, nor claims to be positioned, for a world of higher interest rates. 

The same could be said for the Scottish Mortgage investment trust, which is now the joint third most owned global equity fund among the allocators we cover, picking up a new buyer towards the end of 2023 to now appear in three of the portfolios we monitor.