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Equities have long been the foundation of investor portfolios and historically have produced strong long-term returns.
Overview
While equities have historically produced strong long-term returns, they also tend to be volatile. This is why it’s important to be clear about your investment objectives, time horizon and risk tolerance before investing. And also why it’s crucial to employ an experienced investment manager.

Benefits of investing in equities

Investing in equities has a number of potential benefits:

reasons to invest in equities at pictet Asset Management

Why an active approach matters

We believe experienced active investment managers, who take the time to analyse and select individual stocks, will do better over the long-term than index funds that invest passively and indiscriminately in the market as a whole.

We therefore believe that an active approach is more likely to provide a better return and to help you achieve your investment objectives.

Our approach to equity investing

Our investment managers are specialist stock pickers and are supported by global research teams. 

We are not tied to any one particular style or school of investing. This is because experience shows there is no single approach that works for all markets at all times. 

As they aren’t constrained by a single investment approach, our investment teams have the freedom to uncover the most compelling investment opportunities from their markets in the way that they think will work best.

We do not aspire to cover every market. Instead our resources are focused where we believe we have a real competitive advantage and can deliver the results our clients expect.

Philippe de Weck, Chief Investment Officer Equities

Investing for a better future

Responsibility has long been central to our company, which is why we are at the forefront of our industry in incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into all our investment processes – not least for our equity strategies.

What are the risks?

We believe that investing in equities offers great potential for investors. There are risks however, and it’s therefore important to find an experienced manager to manage these.

Equity strategies could invest in emerging markets, where investments can be higher risk and more volatile, or have investments denominated in a foreign currency meaning a change in exchange rates could affect their value. They may also use derivatives which carry similar risks, or use leverage. Investments are subject to the risk of material losses resulting from human error, systems failures or the incorrect valuation of the underlying securities.

Past performance is not a guide to future performance. The value and income of an investment can fall as well as rise and you may not get back the amount originally invested.

Selected insights

Read more about Equities
Ways to invest

We are perhaps best known as the pioneers in thematic investing. 

We were among the first to appreciate the importance of social, economic and technological megatrends to investing, which led us to pioneer the thematic approach. Beginning in the mid-1990s, we have developed a full range of standalone thematic equity strategies, from Water to Robotics, from Nutrition to Clean Energy. Our thematic fund managers are experts in companies operating in these growing segments of the global economy. By investing in long-term trends, they aim to outperform broader equity markets.

Please select a representative fund from the list below to find out more

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Launch date

Our Quest Equities team combine their proprietary quantitative framework with active discretionary analysis to identify attractively-priced resilient companies. Using cutting-edge technology and access to the fundamental expertise of all of our equity teams, they aim to deliver portfolios with a more defensive profile than the market, and with ESG integration fitted as standard.

Please select a representative fund from the list below to find out more

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We believe that investors focused on long-term growth should capture the enormous economic potential of emerging markets.

Our range of global, regional and country-specific emerging market equities strategies offers investors the potential for investment growth that outpaces more developed markets, as well as income and portfolio diversification.

Emerging market equities has been a key area of expertise for us since we launched our first fund in 1989.

Please select a representative fund from the list below to find out more

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Developed Equities

More than ever we believe in a need for skilled, high-conviction, fundamental stock-pickers. This is the DNA that underpins the approach to all our developed equities investments. Our teams all have long-term proven track records and share ideas and convictions but manage their strategies independently.

Positive Change

Our Positive Change team invest in the transition towards a more sustainable and equitable future through a core unconstrained global equity approach with impact considerations at its core. The team select strong companies across sectors whose products and services are either currently aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), are improving their alignment, or where they identify the potential and willingness to improve alignment.

The development of a proprietary natural language processing tool helps to systematically assess the alignment of companies’ products and services to the UN SDGs and informs the bottom-up investment process. The Positive Change team actively engage with companies to encourage change for the better, backed by the core philosophy that improving impact can be a source of outperformance for investors over the cycle.

Please select a representative fund from the list below to find out more

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Launch date

We believe that hedge fund strategies can offer valuable benefits to equity investors. They have the potential to outperform the broader market, diversify portfolios and reduce risk.

We offer two types of hedge fund equities strategies: market neutral and directional.

Equity market neutral

Our market neutral strategies are hedged to remove market exposure and focus on extracting performance from individual equities. We manage two strategies, one focused on Europe (Agora strategy), and one on Japan (Akari strategy). Both strategies seek to achieve attractive risk-adjusted returns with low correlation to broader equity markets.

Equity directional

Our equity directional strategies aim to achieve long-term capital growth and to protect capital in down markets. They are long/short strategies but, unlike our market neutral strategies, do not aim to reduce all exposure to the market. We offer three strategies, focusing on: Europe (Corto strategy), Greater China (Mandarin strategy), as well as a global strategy (Atlas strategy).

Please select a representative fund from the list below to find out more

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Whilst we remain a house that believes in active management, being client-led we have offered a range of equity index funds since 1986, covering both developed and emerging equity markets. Our index (or tracker) funds aim to capture market returns with low management and transaction charges.

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Our team

100+ years of investment experience

With a track record in equity investment going back to 1910, we have been early investors in new markets and investment styles. We saw the potential of emerging market equities and built our first portfolios in the 1980s. We then pioneered thematic equity investing in the 1990s.

And today...

Pictet Asset Management Equities - by the numbers
equities today
Source: Pictet Asset Management, data as at 30.09.2019.

Contact us

For more information please contact your Pictet Asset Management representative or a member of the team via the contact details listed below:
Japan
8-1 Kakuda-cho, Kita-ku, Osaka 530-0017
Telephone
+ 816 6312 7840
Funds

Please select a representative fund from the list below to find out more

Fund size
Launch date