Most global equity markets declined in the first quarter despite the corporate sector generally reporting reasonable fundamental data. As a result, GMO's 7-year equity forecasts mostly improved over the first quarter. Even with these improvements, International and U.S. equities are still forecast to have flat to negative real returns over the next 7 years, with Emerging equities remaining an exception, forecast to have a positive real return of 1.9%.

In the latest GMO Emerging Equity Insights, Arjun Divecha, head of GMO's Emerging Markets Equity team and a member of the GMO Board of Directors, shares his thoughts on the recent selloff in Russian equities.

Investing requires bearing risk to reap rewards, but there is no definitive causal relationship here. Just because you might be willing to pack up your wagon and head off into the sunset doesn’t ensure you’ll be rewarded with wealth. Today investors should be particularly diligent in assessing risk before setting off on any journey.

Emerging market economies are more vulnerable to the ill effects of ESG issues, but because transparency into such issues in these regions has been lacking, and because investors may have different understanding of risks and opportunities than ESG ratings agencies, integration has been difficult," the white paper says.

In the latest GMO Emerging Equity Insights, titled “Contemplating Value in Emerging Markets Intelligently, with a Little Help from Ben Graham” Amit Bhartia and Matt Seto revisit Ben Graham’s principles of value investing and extrapolate them to investing in emerging markets.

Inker, the head of GMO's asset allocation team, warns that a full-blown trade war "is probably more dangerous for investors at this time than at any other time in recent history."

The authors believe that with today’s heightened valuations across global equity markets, and volatility no longer cheap, now is a fitting time for investors to take a careful look at put writing strategies and consider swapping a portion of their traditional equity exposure for index put-writing. The piece concludes with a “Special Topic” dedicated to examining the recent VIX Blowup.

In a new quarterly letter to GMO's institutional clients, head of asset allocation Ben Inker considers the hypothetical question posed by chief investment strategist Jeremy Grantham in his third-quarter 2017 letter, "What should you do if you are tasked with managing Stalin's pension portfolio?" ("Don't Act Like Stalin! But maybe hire portfolio managers that do?").

James Montier, a member of GMO’s Asset Allocation team, has just published a new white paper -- "The Advent of a Cynical Bubble” – examining the nature of the bubble we find ourselves in, noting the concept that “the US equity market is obscenely overvalued can hardly be news to anyone.”

The GMO Asset Allocation team has released its latest 7-Year Asset Class Forecasts, which show emerging market equities are likely to generate the best real returns over the next seven years, though investors should temper their expectations for those returns.