One of the key things that we are expecting for 2025 is the announcement of tariffs-- not just announcement but, actually, enforcement of those tariffs. The likelihood is that a number of tariffs for certain countries is going to be very, very significant.

There will be a knock-on impact for the U.S. typically, tariffs do bring down growth a little bit. It tends to increase inflation a little bit as well. But what we are expecting to see is that if you look around the world, it's other countries which are likely to be more significantly hit negatively than the U.S. So this will be another case for U.S. exceptionalism, even as the U.S. itself is negatively impacted by its own tariffs.

The headlines always tend to focus on what happens to China with the U.S. trade war with tariffs being introduced, but the reality is is that Canada and Mexico have the greatest exposure to U.S. trade and are, therefore, the most exposed, most vulnerable to the impact of tariffs.

The fundamental economic picture for China is undoubtedly quite dire. The property market continues to struggle. They've talked about announcing new kind of stimulus but really haven't gone as far as the market was hoping for, and now they're going to have to contend with the addition of tariffs from the U.S.

The thing is that from an investment perspective, expectations are already very, very pessimistic. You just need a little bit of good news in order to shift investor sentiment and really take advantage of that valuation differential, which does exist in that global picture.

We've already seen a tremendous performance from the equity markets in India and Japan over the last couple of years. Valuations are now quite extended, and you do hear investors start to question how much further their markets can rally. But, actually, fundamentals continue to look really strong for both those markets. They're both quite closed economies as well, which means that they're less vulnerable to the tariffs which are likely to be introduced over the next 12 months or so. So, actually, from a relative perspective, within Asia, those two economies continue to look likely to be the best performers.

Europe is the perennial disappointment. Every single time they start to perform well, investors get a little bit optimistic, and then, inevitably, Europe disappoints, and we've seen that once again over the last 12 months. They've lost economic momentum, near stagnation. Business confidence in Germany back to COVID lows.

So, actually, the path forward for Europe continues to look really challenging, and now you can throw in political instability, with a number of countries having to deal with new governments who want to introduce budget changes but just don't have the support. So, actually, over the next 12 months, Europe is facing a weak economic picture, political instability, and problems with the budget deficits.

We do have to take geopolitical conflicts into consideration. But the reality is is that over history, geopolitics doesn't have a sustained impact on the market unless it really starts to hit inflation. We saw that with the Russia-Ukraine conflict. We saw that with the Middle East conflict. Until it hits oil prices and, therefore, inflation expectations, the market typically shakes it off pretty quickly.

What we are anticipating, though, over the next couple of years is that geopolitical conflicts will tend to target supply chains. Countries have already seen, since COVID, that those are the vulnerabilities for countries. And if that does happen so that supply chains are targeted, we would be expecting a higher rate of inflation, which, of course, will have an impact on what central banks can do, what's going to happen to economic growth trajectories and then I think that is where geopolitical considerations do become quite important for investors.