In a survey of 4,412 adults, year-on-year shifts in investor sentiment saw emerging markets emerge as winners, while UK property lost out.

Investor sentiment levels towards the UK property market declined by 21.2 per cent in 2016, according to Lloyds Banking Group's Investor Sentiment Index, taking the asset class from 50.1 per cent this time last year to its current 28.8 per cent. (The percentage represents the balance of positive and negative attitudes towards an asset class - the higher the figure, the more positive, and vice versa.)

Conversely, emerging market shares were revealed as the biggest winner, rising 22.7 per cent from -5.8 per cent in January 2016 to 14 per cent in January 2017, followed closely by commodities weighing in at 20.9 per cent.

Three further asset classes also saw increases in investor sentiment in 2016: positive attitudes rose 19.1 per cent towards gold, 17.9 per cent towards Japanese equities, and 8.21 per cent towards UK shares.

Despite the positive year-on-year figure for gold, it was the only asset class that did not see a positive shift in sentiment for January 2017, dropping 1.8 per cent.

However, the popularity of UK shares has increased by nearly 15 per cent in January, coinciding with the FTSE ending 2016 on an all-time high at 7,142.

US shares have seen an 8.9 per cent rise in sentiment this month, which Lloyds said “perhaps reflected the Trump rally at the end of last year.”

“The ISI indicates that UK investor optimism towards US shares is not unusually high, contrasting with extremely buoyant sentiment on the other side of the Atlantic. We would therefore expect to see US equities underperform relative to the MSCI World Index even in the near term,” said Markus Stadlmann, chief investment officer at Lloyds Private Banking.