Summary

• John Hancock Multimanager Lifestyle Balanced Portfolio, while posting a negative absolute return, outperformed the benchmark.
• We benefited from having an underweight position in U.S. large-cap equities and corresponding overweights in U.S. mid caps, the international markets, and defensive equities.
• While near-term trends in economic growth and corporate earnings remained positive, the conflict in the Middle East created significant uncertainty about the outlook for the remainder of the year—particularly as it related to global central bank policy.

Quarterly commentary

• Financial assets experienced mixed returns in the first quarter.
• The fund, while posting a negative absolute return, outperformed the benchmark.
• Asset allocation and underlying manager performance each contributed positively.

Market