Growth assets

Well-known for its market leading, retiree-focused, franking-credit-driven Australian equity income funds, asset manager Plato Investment Management has gone green. Powered by the same detailed quantitative analysis that has driven tits portfolios since inception, the group this week announced the launch of the Plato Global Net Zero Hedge Fund. The fund will be “managed with a…

While all eyes remain focused squarely on whether inflation is “transitory” or not, “persistent” is the adjective that value manager Allan Gray uses to describe the position of the equity market. Speaking in its monthly update, the firm’s Australian managing director and chief investment officer Simon Mawhinney flagged the “exuberance for some stocks and disdain…

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…

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…

The simplest trade may well have been the most profitable since the pandemic began. Backing big tech, the FANGs, or even the S&P500 in which they are more dominant than ever, has been a sure-fire way to deliver the strongest returns in decades to investors in balanced portfolios. But just how important have they been,…

2022 was a pivotal year for managed discretionary accounts (MDAs). Funds under management surpassed the magical $100 billion mark for the first time, as the uptake among financial advisers was boosted by Covid-19. According to the Institute of Managed Account Professionals (IMAP), estimates are for funds under management to cruise past the $200 billion mark…

The second half of 2021 has produced a mixed bag of results for global growth equity funds. A mass rotation away from China and high bond rates impacting valuations saw global growth funds skewed towards Asia and US tech, underperform. Those tilted towards the US more generally outperformed. Looking at the Hyperion Global Growth Fund,…

From being a ‘crypto critic’, Australia has quickly transformed itself to soon be a ‘crypto leader’ by proposing a framework for managing cryptocurrencies and crypto companies, in the biggest shakeup in the country’s payment systems in 25 years. Covid-19 showed us how quickly society digitised its payments systems with the onset of Afterpay and its…

As we enter a post-Covid world, interest rates remain at all-time lows with seemingly no immediate respite. To compound matters, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has given “a very low probability” to the current surge in inflation triggering an early increase in official rates. Inflation has risen somewhat, but in underlying terms the rate…

And just like that, the year is almost over. As 2021 comes to an end, there’s a lot to celebrate, both good and bad. The pandemic is largely behind us, with multiple vaccines administered across the world, but at a great cost and a hefty debt bill. But there is light at the end of the…

Financial advisers can’t be faulted for feeling pessimistic about the future as another year comes to an end. The last few years have seen the advisery world turned upside down, with those who remain paying for the sins of others. But regulation is only one part of the story, as their primary role providing strategic…

“Follow the money” is among the most popular sayings in markets, with the regular Bank of America Fund Manager Survey one of the few insights available into how some US$1 trillion ($1.4 trillion) is being allocated. As is the case in the age of social media, click bait and meme stocks, those with the loudest…