Report published September 28, 2026

Should Investors Pay More Attention to Cash? Strategic Liquidity Insights from UBS

UBS · September 28, 2026

UBS advises investors to strategically manage cash by retaining enough liquidity to cover 2–5 years of expected withdrawals and systematically phasing excess cash into diversified portfolios. Phasing avoids the pitfalls of market timing while taking advantage of growth opportunities across asset classes.

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Finvaulta summarizes UBS's analysis. Attribute opinions, forecasts, time-sensitive values, and chronology to the issuer and report date; do not treat this page as an independent verification or a current market-data source.

Key Takeaways

1.Maintain enough cash to cover 2–5 years of net expected portfolio withdrawals and segment liquidity into everyday cash, core liquidity, and investment cash.
2.Avoid over-relying on high fixed rates; instead, balance short-term liquidity, fixed-term deposits, and high-quality bonds across maturities.
3.Deploy excess cash systematically through phasing strategies to overcome emotional timing pitfalls, as US stocks historically outperform cash over 10- and 20-year horizons.

Key message
01 Investors should begin by actively planning how much cash they really need.
02 Focusing on high fixed rates may overlook risks.
03 Investing surplus cash systematically can overcome emotional pitfalls.
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Key figures extracted from this report

Metric	Estimate	Context
Recommended cash buffer for expected portfolio withdrawals	2-5 years	Recommended duration of net expected portfolio withdrawals to be maintained in cash holdings.
Market expectations for Fed rate hikes	nearly 4 hikes	Market consensus for Federal Reserve rate hikes over the next 12 months compared to UBS's forecast of one additional hike in December.
SNB policy rate	0%	Swiss National Bank left its policy rate unchanged at its September monetary policy assessment.
SNB average inflation forecast 2026	0.7%	Conditional inflation forecast raised due to capacity utilization and Swiss franc depreciation.
SNB average inflation forecast 2027 and 2028	0.8%	SNB forecast for average Swiss inflation in 2027 and 2028.