The global market volatility notwithstanding, investment advisers are confident of good performance in equities and consider European markets, except the UK, to perform best in short-term, while in the long-term, Asia-Pacific minus Japan is expected to take over.

In the Adviser Fund Index (AFI) prepared by the Financial Express, 43.8 per cent of investment advisers representing more than 40 billion pounds of investor assets under management chose Europe excluding UK as the best equity performer in the next 12 months, followed by Asia-Pacific region.

Markets like India were expected to perform worst by 56.3 per cent respondents. However, in the next five years, the APAC was expected to take over in terms of equity market performance with 50 per cent of the respondents vouching for it. The European markets excluding UK got favour from just 6.3 per cent. The outlook on emerging markets was  good in the long-term with 31.3 per cent expecting them to perform better, while only 18.8 per cent giving negative projection.

Overview
Asia Pacific region includes  two fastest growing economies, China and India, besides Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. During the stock market slump in August, India’s benchmark index Sensex saw a growth of 2.5 per cent. It slipped below the 14,000 mark in the beginning of the month but managed to recover and go beyond the 15,300 points.

Japanese markets were preferred for investments by only 12.5 per cent advisers in the coming next five years. North American markets were expected to be worst equity markets during this period.