As the world faces significant structural changes, forecasting the long-term macroeconomic landscape presents unique challenges. Geopolitical developments, rising nationalism, and demographic shifts are reshaping trade relationships and labour markets.
The Amundi Investment Institute’s 2025 Capital Market Assumptions (CMA), entitled “Seeking potential in a pivoting world”, offers an updated perspective on how these dynamics will influence the long-term trajectory of economies and financial markets.
The publication, which is produced in partnership with Amundi’s Multi-Asset Solutions Teams, is a key piece of strategic research that delves deeper into the structural themes that are likely to influence investment returns for decades.
Key findings for investors:
- Ten-year expected returns are higher across the board compared with last year. Almost 70% of the 40 liquid asset classes covered by the study are expected to deliver returns above the past 20-year average.
- Private equity, infrastructure and European equity have shown the most significant improvements.
- A core bond allocation will be a key performance engine, providing a stable anchor for investors’ portfolios. The outlook for credit assets is also positive, particularly for higher quality corporate bonds.
- Emerging Market equities should outperform developed ones, with Indian stocks leading the way. A mixture of Value and Growth stocks will be needed to navigate the AI revolution, climate change and geopolitical dynamics, and deregulation.
- Real and alternative assets remain appealing for their diversification benefits, particularly private debt and private equity, which is the only asset class expected to deliver double-digit returns.
New to this year’s edition:
- A revised long-term macro scenario that reflects socio-economic changes we expect will be caused by increasing geopolitical fragmentation and further delays to the energy transition.
- A more granular assessment of the impact of artificial intelligence at a country level.
- An analysis of the implications of the macro backdrop on financial variables, with a fine-tuning of long-term financial assumptions, particularly regarding interest rates and earnings growth.
- A reassessment of the risk-reward profiles for equity, real assets and alternative investments, with a focus on valuations and fundamentals in US equity.
- Continued enhancements to private asset modelling.