WHY THIS MATTERS TO STEWARDS OF MULTIGENERATIONAL CAPITAL

When a fifth of the world’s managed capital agrees, that agreement is itself a market signal.

Thirteen institutions — Barclays Private Bank, BlackRock, BNY, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity International, Invesco, Janus Henderson, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, KKR, LGT, Lord Abbett, Man Group, and PGIM — collectively steward capital equal to roughly one-fifth of everything professionally managed on earth. Their mid-year 2026 positioning is not one house view; it is a weather pattern.

For the family office, the discipline is not to chase any single firm’s call, but to locate where the weight of institutional capital converges, where it genuinely diverges, and — most importantly — how that positioning maps onto the portfolio architecture appropriate to a family’s own capital: patient, multigenerational, and unconstrained by quarterly liabilities in the way a pension fund or insurer is bound.

PUBLIC EQUITIES

Broad conviction on global equities, sharp disagreement on where within the world to hold them.

The overweight on global equities is nearly unanimous. But peel back the geographic layer and the consensus fractures — a distinction that matters enormously for how a family office actually implements the call, not merely whether to hold it.

The notable dissent

Fidelity International and Invesco are neutral on U.S. equities while overweighting emerging markets — the inverse of the majority position. J.P. Morgan Asset Management and KKR are neutral on ex-U.S. developed markets even while overweighting the U.S. This is not noise; it reflects a genuine split in institutional thinking about whether the mid-2026 cycle favors continued American exceptionalism or a broadening of returns toward international and emerging markets after a long period of U.S. dominance.

FIXED INCOME AND CASH

Cash is the year’s clearest underweight — a quiet but important signal for treasury management.

Where equities showed broad agreement to hold and add, fixed income and cash reveal the mirror image: a broad, if less unanimous, appetite to reduce. Cash is underweighted by eight of thirteen institutions — more than any other single call in the fixed income complex — while government bonds are treated with caution bordering on underweight by the largest managers in the sample.

Notably, BlackRock, BNY, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, KKR, and LGT — five of the largest and most sovereign-bond-sensitive institutions in the survey — are simultaneously underweight both U.S. Treasuries and Eurozone sovereign bonds. Deutsche Bank and Invesco stand alone with an overweight on government debt, a genuine contrarian minority. Investment-grade credit draws modest, isolated conviction from Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Invesco, and PGIM; high-yield credit draws almost none, with Barclays Private Bank the lone overweight.

PRIVATE MARKETS, REAL ASSETS, AND ALTERNATIVES

The most lopsided consensus in the survey — and the one most native to family office capital.

The broad category of “alternatives” carries near-universal conviction — twelve of thirteen institutions, with LGT the lone neutral holdout. Beneath that headline, private infrastructure emerges as the standout sub-asset class, drawing overweight positioning from Barclays Private Bank, BlackRock, BNY, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity International, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, KKR, and PGIM. Private equity, by contrast, is the most conservatively positioned line item in the entire private-markets complex — KKR alone holds an overweight, with every other institution neutral.

INSTITUTIONAL PORTFOLIO ARCHITECTURE

How the consensus maps onto real allocator balance sheets — and where family offices already stand apart.

Positioning calls mean little without the context of the base portfolio they are applied to. A pension fund’s overweight on infrastructure lands very differently than a family office’s, because the starting allocations are structurally different. The chart below synthesizes average portfolio splits across six allocator archetypes, sourced from the Thinking Ahead Institute, UBS Global Family Office Report, OECD, NACUBO-Commonfund, Invesco’s Global Sovereign Asset Management Study, and State Street’s SWF Trends research.

Which institutions offer the most nuanced views for family office positioning

Cross-referencing the outlook data against family office allocation needs, three clusters of institutional research stand out:

• On private markets and alternatives (the family office’s largest single allocation): BlackRock, BNY, Deutsche Bank, Invesco, KKR, Fidelity International, Man Group, and PGIM offer the most granular positioning.
• On public equities (the second-largest allocation): BNY, BlackRock, Fidelity International, Invesco, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, KKR, and Lord Abbett provide the deepest regional and style detail.
• On traditional fixed income (the smallest but still meaningful allocation): Barclays Private Bank, BlackRock, BNY, Deutsche Bank, Invesco, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, KKR, LGT, and PGIM offer the most differentiated duration and credit views.

FREQUENTLY ASKED — MID-YEAR 2026 INSTITUTIONAL POSITIONING

Direct answers for the family office conversation.

What do institutional asset managers agree on most strongly heading into the second half of 2026?

Two calls stand well above the rest in unanimity: an overweight on global equities (11 of 13 firms) and an overweight on alternatives broadly (12 of 13 firms). No other asset class approaches this level of institutional agreement.

What do institutional asset managers disagree on most?

Emerging market equities is the most contested call in the dataset — only 5 of 13 firms are overweight, with 8 remaining neutral and none underweight. This reflects genuine institutional uncertainty rather than a settled view.

Are institutions overweight or underweight cash right now?

Underweight, decisively. Eight of thirteen firms surveyed — including BlackRock, BNY, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity International, Invesco, KKR, and PGIM — hold cash at an underweight, with the remaining five neutral. Not a single firm in the survey holds an overweight cash position.

How does a family office’s asset allocation compare to a pension fund’s or an endowment’s?

Family offices allocate roughly 30% to public equities, 18% to fixed income and cash, 12% to real assets, and 32% to private markets and alternatives — closest in shape to an endowment’s allocation, but with a meaningfully lower private markets weighting (32% versus 41%) and a higher fixed income cushion. Pension funds, by contrast, hold nearly double the fixed income allocation (33%) and less than half the private markets exposure (13%).

Which single asset class shows the widest gap between institutional conviction and typical family office exposure?

Private infrastructure. Eight of thirteen institutions hold an overweight, more than any other private-markets sub-category, and family offices — with patient, multigenerational capital and no near-term liquidity mandate — are structurally well-suited to hold the illiquidity premium that infrastructure investing requires.