Art by Joel KimmelIt’s funny how things turn out. When I graduated at 21, I
knew I wanted to be a journalist, but instead of heading straight to Fleet
Street, I bought some skis and ended up on a coach to the French Alps. I stayed
there for the next three years and never once picked up a newspaper, let alone
a notebook.
In a very roundabout way, it was my time at altitude that led me to editing this magazine. But 21-year-old me, swinging her feet on a chairlift, would not have envisaged she’d be living a different sort of high-life, rubbing shoulders with the world’s largest investors a decade (and a half) on. Places, times, people—they all affected my timeline.
So apart from taking a trip down memory lane, why is this relevant?
It’s around this time that financial firms begin to set out their thoughts for the coming year. Emails flutter into my inbox like autumn leaves against my window: “Themes for 2015,” “Our View on Where the FTSE/S&P/DAX Will Be in 12 Months,” “What’s in Store for Investors Next Year?”—that sort of thing.
They may be of marginal interest, but really, these predictions are no more than flags in the sand to remind journalists (and their readers) that these companies are still there. It’s better to have views than be forgotten, right?
In this edition, we aim to look forward by looking back—but we’re not predicting where short- or long-term interest rates will be by the time you’ve finished reading.
In our review of 2014, “This Was the Year That Wasn’t,” we look back at who had a good, bad, or ugly year. Tired of wondering—and being asked—about balanced fund performance, Assistant European Editor Nick Reeve examines how they would have fared over the past seven years. Would they have been the disaster for pension investors many predicted?
Nick also looks at the future of active investing. There has undoubtedly been a shift into passively managed products while active managers in anything less than the top decile are harangued for charging fees. But for the really good active managers, the push to passive might actually be good news.
Our columnist, former Schroders CIO Alan Brown, tells us how we’ve been looking at risk all wrong—and points out his way forward—while the Scene + Heard section introduces an array of interesting and magical characters.
Finally, we look at what led to the announcement on September 26 that PIMCO’s Bond King had quit the firm he founded more than 40 years ago.
If any fund manager said in December 2013 that Bill Gross would be at Janus Capital a year later, give them all your money now—or steal their crystal ball.