Markets

This week marks the start of a fresh new year. ‘Out with the old, and in with the new’ is the old adage. Unfortunately, it’s not so straightforward with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). Inflation remains stubborn, hovering around the 5.1 per cent mark, but there are fears are that it could very quickly…

“Greenwashing” has once again been highlighted as the major challenge for the financial advice industry when it comes to embracing responsible and ethical investment options. This was among the major conclusions from Australian Ethical’s Investment Trends Report on ESG in the financial advice industry. Australian advisers are “embracing responsible investing as an opportunity to enhance…

High-conviction alternatives manager, HMC Capital (ASX:HMC), has announced the launch of its new HMC Capital Partners Fund 1, which will seek to invest in private and public businesses with real-asset backing. The fund uses a high-conviction and scalable real asset strategy to target public and private companies that have real assets attached to them, and…

In a year marred by rising volatility, inflation, war and supply disruptions, sharemarkets fought a battle between positives and negatives which weighed on equities as investors rotated out of growth assets and into safety. The RBA is tipping GDP to grow by 4.25 per cent over 2022, and by 2 per cent over 2023. Inflation…

In a year shaped by geopolitical tensions, a pandemic, war, inflation and supply-chain disruptions, the number one threat perceived by the general public remains inflation. That’s according to McKinsey & Company’s Economic Conditions Outlook June 2022 survey, which found that inflation topped the list of perceived economic hazards in respondents’ home countries, while geopolitical conflicts…

Morgan Stanley have released their note covering the 2022 Midyear Economic Outlook. Most major economies, including the U.S., Europe, the United Kingdom and China, are each tracking toward GDP growth that will be half that of 2021. On the downside, Russia is estimated to decline by 12% in 2022 in regard to GDP. It will…

Global investment manager, First Sentier Investors, has launched an ESG-friendly property fund which has a built-in carbon overlay feature that allows for the comprehensive measurement and reporting of carbon emissions on all the underlying assets. The fund has been accredited by the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia (RIAA). The fund’s carbon overlay works by analysing…

While several weeks ago now, the threat of 75 basis point hikes is no longer in the future, it has and will likely happen more than once in 2022. Essentially, the Federal Reserve and other central banks, including the RBA, are tiptoeing the line of fighting inflation without sending the economy into recession. This was…

After months of fretting about soaring inflation, markets are now fully in recession-fear mode. Yield curves are flattening, credit spreads are widening, and equities are slumping—traditional recession alerts. Meanwhile, captains of industry and finance are warning of impending “hurricanes,” “super bad feelings”—and possibly even worse. The proximate cause of the latest market selloffs was the…

New research from BCA Consulting predicts Australian equities will outperform global equities over the next 10 to 15 years. The research house expects a global portfolio of 50 per cent equities, 30 per cent bonds, and 20 per cent alternatives to return 5.0 per cent a year in nominal terms over the next decade, lifting…

With inflation embedding itself back into the economy, the days of easy money have quickly become a thing of the past. Not only do central banks now need to take action on inflation, but investors must also change the way they invest to account for higher interest rates. And so, the rotation away from risk…

With both equity and traditional fixed-income investments having exhibited significantly more volatility than most expected, and unfortunately at the same time, understanding and redefining what constitutes a defensive asset is central to managing portfolios in the “new normal” of higher inflation and interest rates. The fixed-income sector is regularly assumed to be quite straightforward and…