Individuals are far more confident in their investments than professionals and are predicting almost 15% long-term returns, Natixis survey shows

• Individual investors expect to make more money from markets than professionals, according to a survey from Natixis.
• The survey found that on average, they expected 14.5% returns in the long run, compared to 5.3% projected by financial professionals.
• Topping the list of investor concerns was market volatility, followed by a lagging recovery and inflation.

Individual investors around the world expect to make substantially more money from markets over the long term than professionals do, according to an annual survey from Natixis.

The survey - which gathered responses from 8,550 individual investors globally with at least $100,000 in assets - found that on average, they expected 14.5% returns in the long run, after adjusting for inflation. That compares to the 5.3% long-term returns financial professionals surveyed by Natixis say is viable.

In the shorter term, individual investors in the US expect 17.5% real returns in 2021, two-and-a-half times higher than the 6.7% real return professionals are anticipating. In the UK, the gap was even bigger - an expected 14.1% real return for individuals versus 4.6% for professionals.

The survey also looked at overriding anxieties for investors. Topping the list globally was market volatility, followed by a lagging recovery and inflation. Volatility was also the top US concern, with potential tax increases coming in second.

Political dysfunction was a top five worry in America and Hong Kong but not globally.

Compared to the average US investor, millennial investors in America were more likely to invest more, trade online, and open up margin accounts. By contrast, the majority of baby boomers made no change to their investments.