Equities

Niche small-and-micro-cap Australian equities asset manager NAOS Asset Management has launched a unique investment fund that focuses on private businesses in Australia. The fund is headed up by Sebastian Evans, also chief investment officer and managing director of the firm. Why private businesses? NAOS has shifted its focus onto the private sector after successful listed…

While equity markets pedaled sideways over the September quarter, volatility has returned, causing a pullback and a lot of pain for global fund managers. Nick Griffin, founder and CIO at Munro Partners, has responded, with the firm’s Munro Global Growth fund returning 3.3 per cent over the period, while the MSCI World ex-Australia index was…

‘Inflation risk is real’. ‘Federal Reserve turns hawkish’. ‘Tapering to begin in November’. These were the headlines that followed Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) member Randal Quarles’ speech at a conference last week. Yet the headlines once again highlight the risk of confirmation bias that afflicts even the most objective, professional investors. While the headlines…

Australia’s exchange-traded fund sector continued its stellar recent run, with record inflows of $2.9 billion in September 2021. Issuer BetaShares’ Australian ETF review report shows a sector of the market in strong health despite increasing volatility. Record inflows were just enough to see assets under management increase, albeit only slightly, for the month, but posted…

Both Magellan (ASX:MFG) and Platinum Asset Management (ASX:PTM) have been gaining plenty of unwanted attention lately. Both their hallmark strategies are suffering from periods of underperformance, the former due to a lack of cyclical exposure, and the latter an ingrained value focus.  It is somewhat interesting therefore that both are banking on China as being…

“Money makes money. And the money that money makes, makes money” – Benjamin Franklin To many, this quote likely stands out as being one of the most capitalist comments that could be made. But the quote refers not to greed, but rather to the benefits of compounding returns. Franklin’s line has been encapsulated in the…

Key characteristics which shone out in the winners of the top categories at this year’s Zenith Investment Partners awards were a pioneering spirit and persistence. The winner of the ‘Fund Manager of the Year’ award, Perpetual Asset Management, can boast possibly the oldest Australian equities fund, and adherence to its long-term focus and value style…

It didn’t take long to see headlines about another technology sector sell-off feed through the market. It seems like a monthly occurrence that the threat of higher bond yields sends the technology sector into free fall. The most common explanation any time that bond rates increase, and the tech-dominated Nasdaq or S&P500 fall, is that…

Australian infrastructure assets such as airports, bridges and ports, known for their reliable income, are becoming the target of cashed-up overseas pension funds and private equity firms. Ausbil Investment Management’s head of global listed infrastructure, Tim Humphreys, and the co-head of global listed infrastructure, Jonathan Reyes, have released a research note on the infrastructure sector…

The 2020s are set to be the years of thematic investing – but so were the early 2000s. And the more things change, the more they stay the same. One of the problems in thematic investing is figuring out what’s a theme and what’s just plain old trendy. But that problem is also a problem…

In the 1950s American economist Harry Markowitz opined that diversification was the only “free lunch” in investing: a reference to the role of the tactic in protecting returns and building wealth for no additional financial outlay. The Nobel Laureate may have changed his mind after witnessing the hedonistic vibe of the 1980s, when business lunches…

There’s a lot of buzz around hydrogen and its potential use as a renewable energy source. Most hydrogen  produced today is “grey” hydrogen, delivered by using natural gas in steam methane reforming. Looking out into the future, “green” hydrogen manufacturing, using electrolysis powered by renewable energy, is under consideration to replace the fossil-fuel-based gas production….