Growth in Asia discretionary assets has coincided with a transfer of cash and of concentrated listed risk back to the house. The allocation problem inside those books is the replacement of a US-heavy equity sleeve without converting the mandate into an illiquid private-markets vehicle.

Jack Siu, Head of Discretionary Portfolio Management, Asia at Lombard Odier, set out a 2026 framework for medium-risk accounts that is explicit on those weights. The book is overweight equities, with the overweight led by emerging markets, and underweight US equities. Fixed income is held at neutral, tilted toward EM bonds and tactically underweight government bonds. Convertible bonds have been added for mid-cap exposure, combining carry with upside optionality rather than substituting for a high-yield credit sleeve. Alternatives remain diversifiers: private credit, real assets and hedge funds. The geographic stance is described as less dollar-centric, with greater emphasis on Asia, Europe, and selected currencies including the yen and the renminbi. Gold is held as a core position in a weaker-dollar cycle. Digital assets are excluded on volatility and operational grounds.

The exclusion is a governance point as much as a market view. A discretionary account that must satisfy daily liquidity, look-through and private-bank suitability standards has limited room for tokens as a structural holding. Gold is the ballast the framework is prepared to defend.

That construction is distinct from single-market listed DPM mandates that have also expanded. Bank of Singapore reported that Singapore-focused discretionary mandates doubled in 2025. Those portfolios typically hold between 40 per cent and 95 per cent in Singapore equities, with the balance in Singapore dollar bonds and cash, and have been used by clients in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore to reduce dollar concentration. The risk budget is high-conviction local equity. It is not an EM-led global multi-asset mix with convertibles and gold. Combining the two into a single “Asia DPM” allocation conceals the difference in drawdown profile and liquidity.

Industry surveys in Hong Kong and Singapore have placed DPM penetration at many private banks in a 6 to 10 per cent range, with a majority of houses intending to raise it. Family offices and next-generation principals are the demand cohorts most often cited. The commercial expansion and the allocation problem are related but not identical. Raising DPM share does not specify whether the incremental risk budget is EM listed equity, a local high-conviction sleeve, convertibles, or a modest alternatives diversifier.

For CIO and DPM desks, three distinctions follow. The first is the identity of the sleeve being filled: EM completion, local-equity conviction, or diversifying alternatives. The second is the liquidity contract. Listed EM and convertibles do not occupy the same part of the book as private credit. The third is what the framework rules out. A published exclusion of digital assets is a committee fact. It is not a marketing preference.

A defensible 2026 discretionary mix, on the published weights above, is therefore a set of committee-ready exposures: an EM equity overweight against a US underweight, neutral fixed income with an EM-bond bias, convertibles as optionality, gold as structural ballast, and alternatives sized so the account remains discretionary. Asset growth around that mix is the distribution outcome. The mix itself is the investment content.