Economics

“Don’t ask yourself if it’s going to rain, ask yourself if you have an umbrella, in case it does,” says Hugh Selby-Smith, co-chief investment officer and head of research at specialist global equity manager Talaria Capital. Drawing on decades of experience, the firm’s January investor update offered both a history lesson and an insight into…

Anyone shopping for basic goods or reading the papers in recent months has likely had more than enough of the “supply chain issues” that many businesses are facing. While many of these are self-inflicted, whether due to our closed borders, the running-down of inventory or a plethora of other issues, they are indeed real. Unfortunately,…

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…

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…

When the going gets tough. As a financial adviser responsible for allocating your clients’ capital, COVID-19 presented sudden and unexpected challenges for most asset classes. Risk assets took an alarming hit but rebounded strongly, while defensive assets were mixed, with bonds performing weakly and cash not worth mentioning. Wherever your clients were invested at the…

It has been a difficult few years, or perhaps decades, for forecasters of all kinds. Whether it was election polling that failed to predict both Trump’s and Morrison’s stunning wins, or the UK’s Brexit; spiralling coronavirus case numbers; or those calling for massive property market and economic pain throughout 2020, the end result was the…

Despite a brief moment in the sun during the depths of the pandemic, Modern Monetary Theory or MMT, somewhat disappointingly remains on the fringes of economic and financial market analysis. Mainstream economists, but particularly politicians from both ends of the spectrum, continue to stoke fear of ballooning government debt, and flag inflationary concerns that simply…

Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc in some parts of Asia, resulting in humanitarian losses that will potentially have a deep and lasting impact on societal values and governance structures. The pandemic has highlighted wide gaps in public health and social security infrastructure that became matters of life and death in some countries. We believe the…

Themes and long-term investing go hand in hand with wide divergence between the merits of ETFs and active funds. A recent plethora of appealingly named ETFs hit on the current hot topics. These quantitatively screened funds can only go so far providing appropriate exposures relying on current data rather than what might evolve. They also…

Inflation has been among the most popular terms across news headlines, research reports and economic forecasts. Whilst the loudest voices tend to dominate in the conversation, inflation is far from a certainty but global asset manager Eaton Vance suggest ‘it’s not an unlikely scenario’ and must be considered. Emerging markets bonds have been increasing in…

Everyone is losing their minds over inflation signals that don’t matter. It is hard to pick up a paper or piece of market commentary at the moment that doesn’t point to some piece of ‘evidence’ that inflation is here and roaring. We have been doing a lot of reading recently around the topic in the…