Fidelity International - Market Tremors and Tectonic Shifts: Navigating the Fault Lines

After a year of seismic changes - geopolitical divergence, the end of US exceptionalism, and volatility across bonds and equities. The next phase demands resilience and adaptability.

In our presentation we will review 2025’s key shocks, tackle the AI bubble question, and examine today’s pressure points: concentrated markets, rising correlations, and the need for diversification. Finally, we’ll explore opportunities emerging from the tremors - from growth in emerging markets to AI adoption beyond mega-cap names.

Join us to navigate a transforming macroeconomic landscape, balancing stability and volatility while uncovering opportunities in the cracks.

Learning Objectives. 
By the end of this presentation, attendees will be able to:

• Describe the tectonic shifts and seismic trends which drove markets in 2025 and will continue to influence markets in 2026
• Recognise the opportunities which these shifting plates can create in asset classes including equities and fixed income
• Understand the new investment strategies which can effectively diversify, deliver alpha for and future-proof client’s portfolios
   

Clever IM - From Allardyce to Algorithms – What Sport’s Data Revolution Can Teach Fund Pickers

The presentation “From Allardyce to Algorithms – What Sport’s Data Revolution Can Teach Fund Pickers” explores how analytics have reshaped decision-making across professional sport and how those lessons apply to investment fund selection.

From football’s embrace of expected goals (xG), player heatmaps and predictive models to baseball’s Moneyball revolution, sport has shown that moving beyond gut instinct to evidence-based strategies, uncovers hidden value, challenges biases, and drives superior performance. Baseball’s use of sabermetrics to identify undervalued players revolutionised recruitment and team building; parallels that resonate strongly with portfolio construction and manager selection.

Traditionally, fund selection relied on reputation and historical returns, much like old-school scouting in sport. Today, as markets grow more complex, the need for data-driven, algorithmic approaches mirrors the evolution seen in football and baseball. This session examines how techniques such as predictive analytics, contextual interpretation of metrics and disciplined frameworks can help fund pickers avoid common pitfalls, such as over-reliance on headline statistics, and build adaptive, resilient investment processes.

By blending engaging sporting analogies with practical investment insights, the presentation argues that success in both arenas depends on moving beyond intuition towards a culture of informed, systematic decision-making.

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this presentation, attendees will be able to:

• Understand how analytics transformed football and baseball strategy and identify parallels in investment decision-making.
• Learn practical techniques for applying quantitative insights to fund selection while avoiding common misinterpretations.
• Explore how algorithmic tools and predictive models can create a more robust, adaptive investment process.
   

Orbis Investments - The more things change, the more they stay the same

The French philosopher and poet Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr coined the phrase “the more things change, the more they stay the same” to describe how proclaimed progress and reform often mask recurring patterns beneath the surface. Financial markets have always been a clear illustration of this insight. While the speed, scale, and mechanics of markets change, the core drivers remain constant. Enduring human behaviours of fear & greed, overconfidence & herding continue to produce familiar cycles of bubbles and crashes, even as each era convinces itself that its narrative is unique and that “this time is different.” Ultimately, valuations reconnect with cash flows and fundamentals.

Today’s dominant narrative is that AI changes everything. This presentation examines how that belief, combined with the rise of passive investing, has pushed markets to historically expensive valuations and created a highly correlated fund landscape in the UK. With inflation remaining stubbornly high and cash unattractive over the long term, we explore how investors can stay exposed to the AI opportunity while building resilience into portfolios should the promise of AI ultimately flatter to deceive.

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this presentation, attendees will be able to:

• Recognise the extent of correlation across widely used multi-asset funds in the UK and why this is so risky.
• Understand why sitting in cash slowly erodes your purchasing power and is arguably the worst of all alternatives.
• Assess alternative themes and strategies with lower correlation and demonstrate how real diversification can enhance portfolio resilience and long-term returns.

Brooks MacDonald - History doesn’t repeat, but it Rhymes

Past performance is no guarantee of future performance is the disclaimer that we are all used to seeing attached to any performance chart, and can be found in all client reports. With Brooks Macdonald celebrating 35 years of working with IFAs and their clients, we will look at how timescales that advisers are using are reducing, along with the changing asset allocations of risk profiled funds. The talk of a bubble within the AI/ Tech sector is constantly being mentioned, whilst at the same time the Mag 7 continues to rise. At the same time, with clients that are approaching retirement that are looking for predictable income from their investments, we will explore how to understand the risks that might not be quite so easy to see on the surface.

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this presentation, attendees will be able to:

• Understand the lessons we can learn from history, especially bubbles 
• Recognise the risks that have steadily been building in portfolios
• Understand the importance of having a differentiated CRP

Columbia Threadneedle Investments - Retirement Planning Challenges: Aligning Risk, Income and Sustainability to Deliver Better Client Outcomes

This presentation on retirement planning is prompted by the recent FCA retirement income review, which reinforces the importance of robust, client focused strategies for managing income in later life. Advisers face increasing challenges in helping clients make decisions that sustain lifestyle throughout retirement while balancing uncertainty and evolving expectations.
 
The session focuses on a core adviser challenge: aligning a client’s attitude to risk with their tolerance for risk. Emotional comfort with volatility does not always align with financial capacity to absorb losses, and misalignment can affect income sustainability over time.
 
We will explore practical considerations using tools such as cashflow modelling and sustainable withdrawal strategies, alongside discussion of common myths and market norms including pound cost ravaging, de risking into retirement and complex strategies. The emphasis will be on how these factors influence long term outcomes when applied in different client contexts.
 
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the session, advisers will be able to:

• Apply insights from the pension review to retirement planning conversations and decision making
• Assess and balance attitude to risk and tolerance for risk including sustainable withdrawal strategies
• Challenge market norms around de risking into retirement and complex strategies when shaping personalised plans

Compliance Update

Another meeting, another compliance update. You would think there is nothing left to say about the changing world of regulation. Depending on your regulatory persuasion, you will be either pleased or disappointed to know that these days there is always plenty to for us to talk about. Whether we look to the future, to focus on the upcoming changes within the industry and the effect these will have on your business, or to simply remind ourselves of some of the changes that have happened in the recent past, and what this means to your business at this current time. Either way there will be plenty of exciting news to be told and heard, provided you are of the right regulatory persuasion!

Although we are unable to publish specific learning outcomes at this stage, the workbook, available on the day, will document all learning outcomes and these can then be used in conjunction with the CPD certificate to update your structured CPD records accordingly.

Remember, compliance support will also be available throughout the day for any specific queries that you wish to discuss on a one to one basis.