Despite fears about the impact of the Middle East conflict on Asia, Jason Pidcock at Jupiter Asset Management remains optimistic about the investment outlook for the region, particularly Asian tech; he explains why the world will be completely different in 10 years time.

At a media roundtable in London yesterday, Jason Pidcock, investment manager of the Asian Income Fund at Jupiter Asset Management, highlighted that artificial intelligence and robots are the top investment themes of the future – with Asia being in the driving seat.

“The most important tech companies in the world are in the US and Asia, particularly South Korea and Taiwan,” Pidcock said. “The firms in South Korea and Taiwan are vital partners of US companies. The US could not do it without supplies from them. They are improving productivity and this will accelerate.”

“In 10 years' time, the world will be completely different. Humanoid robots will be everywhere – in homes, offices, factories, the armed forces,” Pidcock continued. “This will improve productivity. The robots need hardware and software from Asia. Asia will be at the forefront of this and it is a big chunk of where we are investing.”

Jupiter’s Asian Income Fund aims to provide income at least 20 per cent higher than provided by the FTSE AW Asia Pacific Ex Japan index together with the prospect of capital growth. It has outperformed the index over a one-year, three-year, five and 10-year period. “Year to date, the fund is up 26 per cent,” Pidcock said.

“We only invest in five markets – Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, India and South Korea. We don’t invest in China. We like democracies,” he added. Top sectors are tech, followed by financials and telecoms.

The top 10 holdings include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the fund’s largest holding, as well as South Korea’s Samsung Electronics – the largest global producer of DRAM chips which has benefited from the price increase of DRAM and NAND flash memory chips, driven by demand for generative AI. He also invests in Taiwan’s semiconductor firm Mediatek, Singapore financial services firm DBS Group Holdings, Australia’s Woodside Energy Group, Singapore Telecommunications, Singapore Technologies Engineering and Australia’s mining firm BHP Group.

There appears a growing body of investment firms who take similar views. Some 70 per cent of Asian markets fit into the emerging market bracket. Samy Chaar, chief economist, CIO Switzerland at Swiss private bank Lombard Odier, for instance, likes Asian tech. “US tech is quite expensive so we shifted some of our US tech investments to Asia last year where it is cheaper. We bought in Korea, Taiwan, and it is doing pretty well,” he said. Swiss private bank Bank J Safra Sarasin also remains upbeat on emerging market equities.

Emerging markets outperformed developed ones in 2025, driven by a weaker US dollar, stronger relative earnings revisions and improving return on equity (ROE). Corporate governance has also been improving in the region. However, the Middle East conflict sent oil prices to new highs, sparking inflation risks, strengthening the dollar, and making emerging market assets and oil importers vulnerable.

Despite fears about the impact of the conflict on Asia, the region has proved to be quite resilient. “On a five-year basis, the conflict is irrelevant. We absorbed the rise in oil price as the market knows it’s a man-made issue that will come to an end. It’s a temporary phenomenon,” Pidcock said. However, he noted yesterday that because it is a major oil importer, with no oil reserves, India is the most vulnerable as a result of the conflict, while other countries have benefited from it.