Asset Allocation

Reimagining portfolios for tomorrow’s reality Increasing inflation volatility represents the greatest challenge to investors for a generation. A new regime and the collapse of the financial market status quo requires us to reimagine portfolios. No longer can we rely on yesterday’s logic. “Inflation is the endgame. Just brace for inflation volatility first.” Do we still…

Just a few short months ago, we were asking the question “are equities too expensive?” The threat of rate hikes then switched the rhetoric to “why aren’t bond yields higher?” But now investors face an even more challenging question, according to Kerry Craig, global market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management: “what do I do…

The oldest asset class in the world, direct property, is experiencing somewhat of a renaissance amid a surge in inflation and the pursuit of lower-risk income streams. This was part of the discussion at The Inside Network’s Alternatives Symposium, held in Melbourne last week. The sector has evolved quickly in recent years, with Invesco’s Ashley…

Returns for the classic 60/40 portfolio are expected to be “uninspiring” for the 2020s, according to Schroders, and investors are rushing towards private markets to recapture some approximation of the returns they’ve enjoyed over the last decade. According to data from Schroders, private equity has on average produced a 2.4 per cent net return above…

The surprises over the last 12 months should give some indication of the significant uncertainty facing investors in 2022, with forecasts for global GDP growth and inflation having a high chance of coming in well above or below consensus. Market expectations for 2022 have moved significantly in recent months, on the whole pointing to a…

Specialist alternatives investment research firm Evergreen Consultants has released a research report on AAM Investment Group’s Diversified Agriculture Fund (ADAF), attaching a “Highly Commended” rating. This is the highest rating in the rating scale, meaning the fund has scored consistently very well across all areas of Evergreen Ratings’ research and analysis framework. As a result,…

The team at Loomis Sayles has released a research note advising investors to prepare for the transition from pandemic to endemic. Every time a new Covid variant is born, the market is hit with fear and uncertainty as investors brace for the potential economic impact. Loomis Sayles says, “it’s important to pay attention to new…

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…

“Learning to live with COVID will be the major theme of 2022,” according to Ken Leech, chief investment officer of leading fixed income manager Western Asset. But not necessarily in the way we think. As the Omicron variant ravages Australia and other parts of the developed world, Leech highlights continuing travel restrictions and lower vaccination…

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…

Australian investors ploughed as much as three times more money into equity-focused managed funds in 2021 than they did in 2020. Being the preferred source of investment vehicle for the majority of financial advisory groups and investment platforms, it provides a unique indicator into the sentiment within the advisory market. According to global funds researcher…