Equities

It’s the showdown of the equities funds management world: not value vs. growth, but long-only versus long-short. Do long-only managers fight with one hand pinned behind their backs, as their long-short counterparts assert? We tested a random pair.

In case any active managers needed reminding, asset consulting firm Frontier Advisors has confirmed that 2024 was the most challenging year for global active equity managers in more than two decades.

Self-funded retirees understand the capital risk in holding the ‘big four’. It’s one they’re prepared to take knowing their effective grossed-up yields are much higher than the nominal figure.

The rise of passive investment makes tremendous sense, especially when the index being tracked is on the large cap side. Move down the index, however, and it can pay to have someone sorting out the winners from the losers.

Australian investors are looking past the allure of franking credits and moving towards more unbiased diversification, with ETFs providing a cheap, liquid and highly available access point.

With traditional equity managers losing the fight against passive product providers, diversification into more specialist classes of asset management may provide a more sustainable path. But that’s a pricey endeavour, and easier said than done.

The entrenched position of the banks and miners in the ASX 200 doesn’t necessarily correlate to inherent growth potential, especially with the issues both sectors face into. For investors, it may be worth considering an alternative path broad market exposure.

The small-cap space can be rife with risk, as emotion and understanding wrestle with common sense practice. But with a systematic style overlaid to provide flexibility, diversification and liquidity, the benefits become clear.

It’s one thing to acknowledge the immense computing power at our disposal, but it’s another for leading investment teams to figure out the best ways to shape that advantage into better investment outcomes.

Australian small cap managers are some of the most successful active managers in the world – and charge like it. But their apparently anomalous outcomes might have a relatively simple explanation, according to Invesco.

Being caught up in a constant thrum of market activity might be advantageous for some investment teams, Desmond explained, but isn’t necessarily for those with a high conviction style.

Despite a proliferation of providers entering what is an already crowded market, DNR Capital has managed to pull of an impressive run in the Australian Equities SMA space.