Investing 101

Whilst insurance companies are typicalled considered “technical, mundane and incredibly boring,”  Ed Waller and his team at Yarra Capital Management believe there is a time, a price and a place for almost everything. And for the first time in close to a decade they believe insurance is now compelling. Deputy Portfolio Manager of the Yarra…

Investor awareness of the private debt sector is growing, and will only grow more as the dedicated funds in the marketplace continue to rack up strong performance, adding to the options available to hard-pressed yield-oriented investors. The Alceon Debt Income Fund is certainly one of the products to which yield-focused investors have turned, with its…

Leading investment bank JP Morgan recently released its 2022 Global Alternatives Outlook, which seeks to understand the key trends and risks facing investors over the next 12 to 18 months. Since 2020 the “alternative” assets have seen record capital flows, as advisers sought to add further diversification to portfolios and gain access to the advertised…

Speaking ahead of the Federal Reserve’s much anticipated announcement, Paul O’Connor, head of multi-asset at global manager Janus Henderson, highlights that there are many more risks on the horizon than interest rates alone. In terms of the adjustment that markets are making in light of a potentially higher discount rate, “it is far from obvious…

Uncertainty has returned to the market after a bumper 2020, fuelled by persistent inflation and a pandemic that never really went away. But in its latest alternatives outlook, JPMorgan warns that investors “aren’t seeing the forest for the trees.” “Up close, the ‘trees’ in the 2022 outlook are clear,” writes Anton Pil, global head of…

The last two years have been a near-perfect storm of activity for many financial advisers. The onset of the pandemic placed significant pressure on advisers to respond to client queries at a time of immense stress; many advisers were trying to deal with a flood of new clients as industry numbers dwindled and the big…

Perennial Partners’ sustainable small cap equities fund, the Perennial Better Future Trust, was up 2.4% net of fees in December, beating the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Accumulation Index’s return of 1.4%. The trust has been in operation for almost four years, since inception in February 2018, and has grown to exceed $100 million in assets. The…

If we are truly honest about the state of the Australian investment industry when it comes to alternatives, we were very much a backwater for many years. That is, at least, at the mass market, retail, or wholesale level. For many years, the best alternative assets advisers could access were the so-called “black boxes” of…

Morningstar has released its “top-performing global equity fund managers in 2021” report. This year, the funds that performed the best contained a well-disciplined approach to investing, together with an experienced team capable of producing high-performance numbers. The research report found that the top three global fund managers also had outstanding longer-term performance numbers. What this…

HUB24 (ASX:HUB) – Shares in the leading wealth management platform are rallying on the back of record second-quarter net inflows of $3.6 billion. This includes $349 million moved to the new Rhythm Super product, a private-label wealth management platform owned by Insignia Financial (ASX: IFL), the former IOOF. The strong quarter means the group is…

It shouldn’t take one of the most successful self-made hedge fund billionaires to remind us, but the warning may well be timely. In Howard Marks’ latest missive, titled ‘Selling Out’, the author highlights the biggest mistake or ‘cardinal sin’ of investing. That being to ‘sell out’ of otherwise quality assets on little more than a…

Sentiment is shifting in the discussion about the outlook for gold. The view that the gold price will continue to weaken, as it has done for much of this year, has given way to more positive forecasts. The reason is rising inflation, and the fact that inflation-adjusted bond yields are in negative territory – a…