Moo introduced the bank’s new SAA model, designed to equip investors with a long-term framework that factors in persistent volatility, elevated interest rates, and a structural shift in global order. “We firmly believe that our proprietary model fills a needed gap in the market today to create sustainable portfolios over the long term,” he says.
Fractured global order emerges
The theme of fragmentation was front and centre. Jean Chia, BOS’s global chief investment officer, pointed out that geopolitical tensions, trade barriers and populist policies are replacing the US-led globalisation model that prevailed after the Cold War.
“From immigration controls to rising tariffs, this is an age of self-defence and self-preservation,” says Chia. She referred to escalating tariff threats from US President Donald Trump, who has proposed sweeping tariffs on countries ranging from Japan and South Korea to Brics and Asean economies, with rates of 25% to 50%. “Episode 90,” she quipped, referring to the 90-day deadline Trump gave for tariff enforcement, noting the summit’s coincidental timing.
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The result, according to BOS, will be a global supply shock, weakening demand, and persistent inflation. “US growth is likely to fall from 2.4%–2.8% to around 1.5%–1.4% and global growth will decelerate to 2.7%,” Chia says. Inflation, she added, will likely trend higher in the second half of the year due to tariff pass-through and depleted inventories.
The 2025 Supertrends report expands on this view, stating that the return of Trump to the White House has “accelerated the shift towards a new order of geopolitical rivalry, rising trade barriers, hostility to immigration and widening populism.”
This transition is expected to result in persistent inflation, elevated interest rates, a structurally weaker US dollar, and surging demand for safe-haven assets. “We expect inflation to remain above central banks’ 2% targets for the rest of the decade,” the report noted.
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Building resilience through robust asset allocation
With uncertainty now a structural feature of markets, BOS has developed a new framework for portfolio construction. Owi Ruvivar, BOS’s chief portfolio strategist, introduced the bank’s “robust optimisation” approach — an investment model built to perform across a wide range of future scenarios, not just a central forecast.
“When one is unsure of the correct answer, the best approach is really to build a portfolio,” Ruvivar says. Unlike conventional methods such as market-cap weighting or mean-variance optimisation, which can become fragile in volatile markets, the BOS method uses engineering principles to account for uncertainty directly.
The bank identified 10 asset classes with varying risk-return profiles and ran 1.7 trillion combinations, filtering down to 120,000 “robust” portfolios using stress testing and scenario simulations. From there, BOS selects five core portfolios differentiated by their risk characteristics.
“The optimal portfolio may do well if you’re right, but quickly becomes suboptimal if you’re wrong,” Ruvivar says. “We are designing portfolios not to predict but to endure.”
The Supertrends report refers to this shift as “resilience by design”, noting that robust asset allocation “translates into more resilient portfolios that better align with investors’ long-term goals.” It also warns that in the new world order, traditional diversification benefits may weaken due to correlated risks across regions and asset classes.
Alternative assets and gold play a more prominent role in this model. “Gold has been our stellar performer,” says Chia, pointing out that it has risen 26% since the start of the year, surpassing the S&P 500’s 6% and MSCI ex-US equities’ 16%. “The twin performance of equity and currency gains has added real value to non-US portfolios, especially in Europe and Hong Kong,” she added.
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The report also projects that the US dollar will weaken significantly. “The greenback remains overvalued after two decades of US market outperformance,” it states, adding that rising budget and current account deficits will accelerate investor rotation into alternative assets and currencies such as gold, Swiss francs, Japanese yen and Singapore dollar.
The US-China divide deepens
Geopolitical risk took centre stage during the BOS US-China panel, with economists and policymakers discussing the long-term implications of strategic decoupling between the world’s two largest economies.
Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, warns of a broader range of outcomes for US growth. He cited three key risks: labour market disruptions due to talent expulsion and immigration curbs; economic shifts driven by artificial intelligence; and the erosion of institutional stability following the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, which empowers the president to remove federal employees.
“We have a wide range of outcomes for US growth over the two-year horizon. It’s probably going to average around zero,” says Posen. He expects inflation to rise visibly within a year, forcing the Federal Reserve to maintain higher rates regardless of leadership changes.
“The consensus remains too calm about inflation,” he added. “We’re going to end up with acute shortages in sectors like agriculture, construction, and home health care due to labour constraints.”
As for China, Guo Kai, executive president of the CF40 Institute, says the country had entered 2025 on a stronger footing thanks to fiscal stimulus and stabilisation in the property market. But the mood after Liberation Day has shifted. “Confidence and credit demand are weakening again,” Guo says. “We just published our Producer Price Index for June, down 3.6% y-o-y.”
While monetary easing may resume in late 2025, Guo, a former economist with the International Monetary Fund, noted that further cuts are constrained by historically low net interest margins at Chinese banks.
Robin Hu, Asia chair of the Milken Institute, highlighted deeper structural changes on both sides. “The US is moving toward supply chain reshoring, energy self-sufficiency, and high-wage production,” he says. “Meanwhile, China’s key themes are technology dependence, green transition and supply chain resilience.”
According to the Supertrends report, BOS predicts that the US-China rivalry will persist, reshaping trade and capital flows. “There is no reversal absent a fundamental realignment of US politics,” the report states, warning that unilateral US policies will fuel fragmentation rather than resolution.
The key takeaway from the BOS CIO Summit is that the world has entered a period of systemic, not episodic, uncertainty. “Our weapon against uncertainty is not fear, but a strategy,” says Chia. “We need to rethink portfolios and reimagine the world.”
BOS believes investors must prepare portfolios for multiple futures, not by predicting a single path, but by building resilience into their capital allocations. Their robust optimisation model provides exposure to strategic themes such as clean energy, artificial intelligence and demographic transitions, while ensuring downside protection and alignment with long-term objectives.
“Robust asset allocation is not just a technique; it is the risk discipline required to implement the Supertrends with confidence,” the report concludes. “Investors are no longer asking only what to invest in — they are asking how to stay invested when the world keeps changing.”
