A short watch. 

In the second part of our video interview with Alan Higgins, CIO at Coutts, we talk about some of his big asset allocation decisions, as well as his worries about liquidity and the chances of a Fed policy mistake.

Being “broadly risk-on”, Alan talks me through his conviction behind Japanese and Russian equities, including how you adopt an ESG approach in the latter without using specific filters.

On the risk of policy makers ‘over-tightening’ in the US, Alan paraphrases MIT economist Rudi Dornbusch when he says: “the economic cycle doesn’t just fall over, it’s usually murdered by the Federal Reserve Board”. Could we be heading for that dramatic scenario this year?