It’s fair to say that 2023 was a challenging year for portfolio managers around the globe since the markets were driven by a number of different factors and unpredictable incidents. Each of these could have caused a major market downturn on their own. First of all, there were a lot of geopolitical tensions around the globe beside the still ongoing war in Ukraine, which showed that democratic states might be more vulnerable than one may think. The concerns of investors, especially in Europe, increased toward the end of 2023 since the actions taken by the Houthi rebels in the Red

Since the outflows of €100.3 bn for the year 2023 marked the highest outflows from mixed-assets funds on record, it is worthwhile to analyze the underlying trends in this segment of the European fund industry, as we may see a new era for mixed-assets funds. Since ETFs play only a very minor role in the segment of mixed-assets funds, we won’t analyze the flows by product type. Graph 1: Estimated Annual Net Flows in Mixed-Assets Funds (Euro Billions) Source: Refinitiv Lipper Mixed-assets funds have been in the focus of European investors since after the credit crisis in 2008. This was