Staying Invested In Volatile Times: The Case for Multi-Asset Strategies in 2026

As investors step into 2026, the global investment landscape looks anything but calm. According to Market Pulse 2025 by Germinate Investor Services, the coming year is shaping up to be one of heightened volatility, marked by sharp asset price movements, uneven valuations, and rising macroeconomic risks.

The turbulence of 2025 offers important lessons. Asset prices swung widely across equities, commodities, currencies, and interest rates, creating an environment where performance was far from uniform. While equities struggled through phases of uncertainty, commodities delivered strong gains, underlining how quickly leadership can rotate across asset classes in a changing global cycle.

In such conditions, the report cautions that volatility itself is not the real threat to long-term wealth creation. “In such an environment, the biggest risk for investors is not volatility, it is exiting markets altogether.” History shows that investors who move out during periods of stress often struggle to re-enter at the right time. “Timing re-entry in fast-moving global cycles is far more damaging to long-term wealth than remaining invested through short-term swings,” the report notes.

This backdrop sets the tone for how investors should think about 2026. As per the report, the year ahead is unlikely to reward narrow bets or single-theme strategies. Instead, it calls for a shift in investing style from speculation to informed allocation and diversified portfolios. “2026 is not a year for single-theme or single-asset bets. It is a year that demands portfolio construction, not speculation,” the report states.

Multi-asset investing emerges as a central theme, says the report. By allocating across asset classes, investors can look at balancing growth with resilience. Such strategies allow portfolios to “capture upside from equities and growth themes,” while also offering protection through exposure to gold, silver, and other defensive assets. Investors can look at currency and international exposure, as per the report, as a hedge against global uncertainty. “ This can help them reduce portfolio drawdowns by combining assets with low correlation,” says the report.

2025, explains the report, has shown how commodities significantly outperformed equities. This clearly demonstrates that by spreading investments across uncorrelated assets, multi-asset strategies seek to reduce drawdowns during periods of stress, without sacrificing long-term return potential.

Looking ahead, the report expects the “performance gap between asset classes to widen further in 2026.” Thus, in an increasingly fragmented global market, staying invested and diversified into multi-assets may not just be the choice, but a necessity for long-term investors, says the report.