Standard Chartered Global Market Outlook 2026

Standard Chartered (“the Bank”) Wealth Solutions Chief Investment Office (CIO) has released its Global Market Outlook for 2026(Opens in a new window), outlining its investment strategy and key themes for navigating global markets in the year ahead.

The Bank’s CIO expects risky assets to perform well in 2026 as major asset classes continue to inflate. Inflating gains are expected to be accompanied by greater dispersion, resulting in the CIO’s preference to diversify across a wider range of asset classes centred around three key themes:

Theme 1 – Equities: With inflating markets, the CIO expects strong earnings growth to dominate elevated valuations in 2026, with market gains led by the US and Asia ex-Japan. It is also important to manage risks through regional diversification or sector picks.

Theme 2 – Income: We expect Emerging Market (EM) bonds to outperform Developed Market (DM) bonds. EM (USD and local currency) bonds offer attractive credit quality, higher yields and diversification from a Fed-centric outlook alone.

Theme 3 – Diversifiers: The CIO expects gold to extend gains in 2026, but demand for alternative strategies and currencies like JPY and CNH remain high amid a range of uncertainties and are key to diversifying well.

In terms of risks, we would closely monitor four key risks which hold the potential to alter investment outlook:

1. A negative shock or disappointment relative to high expectations in the AI theme poses a risk to equity markets.
2. A credit event that leads investors to worry that default risk is systemic, rather than idiosyncratic, poses a risk to both equities and credit, across private and public markets.
3. Any data or event that limits the Fed’s ability to cut rates poses the risk of disappointing markets and triggering a reassessment of valuations.
4. An unexpectedly hawkish Bank of Japan that pushes Japanese yields and the JPY sharply higher would pose a risk to equities and corporate bonds.

Steve Brice, Global Chief Investment Officer, said, “Managing emotions is key to investing. Scenario planning will help prepare investors for the volatility expected in the coming year and help them remain invested through the cycle. While there are bubbles blowing in the equity market led by the boom in AI, we see differences between this current trend and what happened with the 1990s dot com bubble. We hope the views shared in our latest outlook report will offer investors perspectives on how they can position their portfolios to capture investment opportunities in 2026.”

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Standard Chartered PLC is listed on the London and Hong Kong stock exchanges.