Swiss private bank Sarasin is to move up its equity exposure to the Gulf and other emerging markets.

"Our focus has been on China, India and the Gulf markets - each of which we see as having autonomous growth potential, even in the face of a more prolonged slowdown in the West," the bank said in a report.

"In the longer term, we will make more significant structural increases in emerging world exposures across our endowment, trust and multi-generational accounts to reflect a changing world order in the years ahead, but are slightly more cautious in the short term given the extraordinary rises already seen,” it said.

"We're somewhat suspicious of the extraordinary rally in oil seen over the last months. Our indicators suggest abnormally high compliance by OPEC over the past six months, evidence of aggressive Chinese stock piling, and an unusually high correlation with the recent weakness in the US dollar. This leaves us cautious in the short term of both physical oil prices and the valuation of oil stocks," said Burkhard Varnholt, chief investment officer, and Guy Monson, chairman of the investment policy committee.

“In contrast to the West, the emerging world will, of course, be in rude health but global activity will still suffer. It is this that leaves us nervous about the extraordinary rally in some of the weaker cyclical companies in April and May, as well as the extraordinary rally in oil prices in June," he said.