
29 February 2024
Capital Markets and Strategy Team
While investing in volatile times can sometimes challenge your discipline and commitment, there are timeless principles to include in your investment strategy that can help ease your mind and keep you focused on the long term.
It’s rare for any investment to repeat as a top performer from one year to the next. Diversifying across various economies, businesses, countries, and popular investment classes can help spread risk, remain more consistent, and reduce the potential for underperforming assets to impact your portfolio.
Historical asset class rotation, 2013–2023
Calendar year total returns by class assets (%)


Source: Manulife Investment Management, Bloomberg, as of 31 December 2023. Total returns are shown in local currency or in USD for multimarket indexes.
In good times, investors are excited, they want to invest more and often “buy high.”
When markets turn negative, investors become fearful and decide to cut their losses and “sell low."
Stay disciplined and committed to your long-term investment plan to avoid riding the emotional roller coaster.
Watch a video on this topic (49s)
An investor’s emotional roller coaster

Source: John Hancock Investment, a company of Manulife Investment Management. This chart is an example and does not represent the performance of any actual investment. This is not meant as investment advice. For illustrative purposes only.
The difference between investment success and disappointment can boil down to a few days of being in or out of the markets.
By staying fully invested and not missing the best investment days in 2023, investors could have outperforming returns.
Watch a video on this topic (42s)
2023 S&P 500 Price Index
Fully invested vs. missing the best days

2023 The Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index
Fully invested vs. missing the best days

2023 The Bloomberg US Aggregate Index
Fully invested vs. missing the best days

Source: Bloomberg, Capital Market and Strategy Team from Manulife Investment Management. As of 31 December 2023. The charts are examples and do not represent the performance of any actual investment. This is not meant as investment advice. For illustrative purposes only.
Accept the fact that markets will rise and fall but over time markets have always moved higher.
Taking a long‑term perspective can help you stay the course when markets move from crisis to opportunity and back again.
Despite setbacks, the MSCI World Index shows growth over the long term
Growth of USD$10,000

Source: Bloomberg, Manulife Investment Management, as of December 31, 2023. For illustrative purposes only. Red circles indicate periods of market decline. The index is unmanaged and cannot be purchased directly by investors. Past performance does not guarantee future performance.
By investing a fixed dollar amount in regular intervals dollar cost averaging can help you buy more units of an investment at lower prices and fewer at higher prices.
This helps take the worry out of making a single lump-sum investment at the wrong time.
12-month comparison
$12,000 single lump-sum investment vs. $1,000 monthly investment using dollar cost averaging

For illustrative purposes only.
5 ways a budget plan can help you manage your finances
We all know approximately how much money we need each month. However, without a clear spending strategy, you could see a shortfall in savings, face a lack of day-to-day cash, or be caught off guard by unexpected costs. That’s why it’s important to have an effective budget plan that will give you control over your finances.
Risk Diversification
There is no free lunch. But Risk Diversification comes close in investing. A diversified portfolio was shown to optimize returns with lower volatility in the long run.
Get started with managing your personal finances
People often view managing their personal finances as a complicated process. In fact, it’s a lot more straightforward – it’s organising your money by establishing a budget that accounts for current expenditure, as well as building a strategy for the years ahead to achieve your financial goals. In this introductory article, we will provide steps for creating a financial plan and underscore the importance of managing your money effectively.
Global Equity Diversified Income (GEDI) strategy update: Risks and opportunities
In early April, developments in the Middle East showed signs of stabilisation, prompting a partial recovery and renewed risk-taking in equity markets. However, beyond ongoing geopolitical risks, other factors—including potential private credit contagion across banks and broader financials—continue to pose downside risks. Despite these uncertainties, we believe an income centric approach, combined with global diversification across growth, value and income equities, has provided both downside resilience and upside participation for the Global Equities Diversified Income (GEDI) strategy.
Global tech and semiconductors: what’s been driving returns and what to watch next
Semiconductors have been one of the strongest parts of global equity markets so far in 2026, with performance supported by a powerful mix of demand and improving fundamentals. The headlines have focused on artificial intelligence (AI), but the opportunity set is broader than a single theme or a handful of companies. As AI infrastructure expands, it is driving investment not only in high-performance computing chips, but also in the networking and power technologies that keep modern data centres running. At the same time, parts of the industry outside AI are showing early signs of stabilisation and recovery.
Global Multi Asset Diversified Income Fund (GMADI) update amid recent Middle East developments
Global markets turned to a risk off mode in March 2026 as rising geopolitical tensions in the Middle East eclipsed earlier optimism about growth and policy support. Equity and fixed-income markets declined as energy price shocks and uncertainty weighed on investor confidence. However, the diversified portfolio construction and income generation focus supported the Manulife Global Fund – Global Multi Asset Diversified Income Fund (“GMADI” or “the Fund”) in delivering relatively resilient performance ( 4%) .