Despite a worsening outlook and overall market pessimism, six of the 12 Nordic funds surveyed, which have more than €107.3bn of assets under management, intend to buy more equities.

At the same time, almost 60 per cent said they intend to reduce their exposure to fixed income.

Nordic investors remain overwhelmingly negative about world growth prospects with 66 per cent of respondents indicating they were not optimistic about the economic backdrop going forward. Only 8 per cent were positive, while the remaining 26 per cent were neutral.

In terms of performance, 33 per cent of the investors surveyed believe emerging market equities will turn in between 5 per cent and 10 per cent over the next six months, while 41.7 per cent believe that US equities will return -5 per cent.

Jeff Chowdhry, head of emerging equities at F&C Investments, explained: “Two-thirds of this year's global growth will be directly attributable to emerging markets, which means the investment story in the region is still very compelling.

“Year-to-date emerging markets have fully participated in the downturn suffered by developed markets, but that in itself shows a higher degree of maturity.”

The survey also found that more than half the funds plan to increase their exposure to both hedge funds and private equity over the next six months, while 33 per cent intend to increase their exposure to infrastructure.

See here for the full survey.

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