In the first of a two-part blog, we delve into the metaverse, and consider how far the vision is from becoming a (virtual) reality.

After years of underinvestment, the world is in the early stages of a potential global gas crisis. But with ambitious global climate targets largely incompatible with natural gas demand, uncertainty abounds.

The past month saw a rapid shift in markets from worrying about inflation to worrying about growth. How should investors balance the risks?

Taking a step back from day-to-day market movements, we have reflected on our team's overall investment strategy outlook and economic thinking. An update of our established framework of recession indicators suggests that the economy has moved into late cycle much faster than we expected. This makes our bullish view on equities more tactical than it was before.

Numerous factors are putting upward pressure on prices in Japan, and the yen is acting as an escape valve for the central bank's yield curve control policy.

Commodity investments can provide diversification and hedging benefits against inflation risk, but are not a panacea. Good performance in inflationary periods has historically been offset by lower long-term return expectations. Our view of the trade-off suggests commodities can play a role in portfolios, bringing beneficial diversification potential, when needed.

While the precious metal appears expensive on valuation grounds, heightened risk aversion has led to additional demand from central banks.

LGIM review the Bank of England's decision to increase its interest rate to 0.50% and the implications for the economy, gilts, and corporate bonds.

The taper tantrum of 2013 showed how sensitive emerging markets (EMs) were to higher US rates, but there are some important differences this time around.

Frontier markets (FMs) have performed well in recent months. Have valuations now become stretched?

We need to remain humble and nimble as we assess the changing investment landscape and seek to fulfil our purpose: to create a better future through responsible investing.

Even though 2022 has begun with an abrupt change in the macro narrative, stoked by the Fed, we hold the line on our bullish outlook for risk assets.

As this is the first time since the 1980s that inflation has been a challenge, our Asset Allocation team has turned their four steps to navigate inflation in portfolios into a practical inflation toolkit to provide additional support that aims to help protect client portfolios.

Even though we're only a few weeks into the new year, investors have already seen some significant moves in markets. In a special CIO call, we discussed how they might play out.

Active ownership means striving to create sustainable value for our clients. Our new report details how we achieved this in 2021.

There's never a quiet time for US technology stocks, it seems. The latest issue has been a very macro one - bond yields. The sharp rise in US bond yields has made for a painful start to the year for the sector, but we expect tech to continue outperforming through 2022.

First-quarter earnings for 2022 have so far not delivered many upsets, even if the post-pandemic lustre is fading. Looking to next year, however, the red-hot US labour market could threaten earnings – making it all the more important to turn to a broad set of data points to build a picture of what to expect.

2021 could be described as a 'great acceleration' for sustainability policy: political leaders and policymakers committed to significant reforms, and empowered companies and industries to act. But are these reforms far-reaching or fast enough?