How are Italian investors behaving in this phase marked by the Covid crisis and the feared return of inflation? To draw a picture of the sentiment is a UBS report that focuses precisely on the Italian stock market. From which it emerges that in our country, in the first quarter of 2021, investors tend to invest more in equities, while always maintaining a certain amount of liquidity in one's portfolio. In fact, 50% of Italian investors still have more than 10% of liquid positions. There is indeed fear of inflation: half of savers believe that consumer prices could rise in the coming years, even if according to Ubs a climate of confidence prevails by far, with a further improvement compared to the last phase of 2020 .
In fact, 75% of Italian investors are optimistic, while in the last quarter of 2020 there were 70% confident investors. Optimism towards the Italian economy is also on the rise compared to the last quarter of 2020: 83% of Italian investors say they are confident in this respect, while at the end of 2020 they were 71%. However, Covid continues to frighten, at least to a large part of our country's savers, and not only him: 49% of investors are still worried about the spread of the virus; 48% identify climate change as a concern; and even 45%, despite the recovery plans with European funds that will allow for expansive policies, are afraid that at some point the bill will be presented, through a possible tax increase Also in Italy.
However, more than half of Italian investors think of modifying their portfolio over the next 6 months, and in a way that is anything but conservative: on the contrary, only 10% of the total plan to reduce their equity exposure. The majority are organizing themselves in this way, according to the UBS report: 47% think it is useful to increase sustainable investments; 43% believe it is useful to add an equity component to the portfolio; 34% think it is useful to invest in real estate. More specifically, the Swiss bank's analysis reveals that the "sexiest" investment opportunities are those in companies that experiment with technological development (78%), in companies that focus on environmental sustainability (77%), in equities in general, to diversify the portfolio during the recovery (72% of respondents think so).
