Opinion

Clearview and trustee ETSL have raised eyebrows and confused advisers by shifting the popular WealthFoundations super and pension product to investment platform provider HUB24. “It’s like a power plant being run by a battery,” says adviser Jason Poole. “It makes no sense.”

As the biggest ETF provider in Australia, Vanguard has the right to crow about another knockout performance over active equity. But invective commentary is a red flag, especially when it’s based on something as changeable as recent market performance.

The move from Viridian and CFS to provide personal advice in a scaled manner highlights a growing willingness within the industry to fix its own problems in lieu of waiting for the government.

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 benchmarks that are supposed to measure performance and create alignment with end investors are working against asset managers, and the industry must find new ways to demonstrate value before it’s too late, according to MFS.

A slowing economy has prompted S&P/ASX 200 companies to keep a lion’s share of their earnings by tightening shareholder distributions, with fund manager Martin Currie identifying the resources sector as a real cause for concern regarding future income.

Peoples’ notion of how they will fund their retirement habitually downplays the role of social security. Reflecting a lack of understanding about how the different income streams interact, it behoves superannuation funds to better educate their members.

While APRA’s proposed hybrid phase out is designed to improve the resilience of the financial system, it will inevitably impact investors and the strategic plans that some advisers have laid out. Navigating the transition will require forethought.

True diversification means owning assets that are truly uncorrelated. But that fact hasn’t stopped big investors from piling into the private markets while pretending that the Fed Put can protect their public portfolios.

With markets at all-time highs and term deposits paying 5 per cent, the focus needs to shift away from relative returns and back towards positioning for “consistent, absolute” returns that accommodate present market risks.

Pessimists are still trying to shoehorn the “bubble” narrative into the private capital story, but an EY report highlights not only the rise of this burgeoning ‘alternative’ sector, but the reasons it’s likely to keep growing.

Why Powell went for a double-dip on the guide rate at the world’s most important reserve bank, sans the presence of a significant economic event that would typically predicate it, remains a mystery. What is clear, though, is the near-term direction of rates in US.