Opinion

Comment by Jamie Nemtsas I have been an adviser for 25 years and, apart from a quick dalliance with AMP as a graduate, I have worked at or owned a self-licensed wealth management practice for all that time. Those practices, independent from institutional owners, have always built portfolios from the ground up.  Asset allocation, tactical…

The now not-so-new ETFs that follow well-known indices have been a hugely welcome introduction. One does not have to debate the inexplicable underperformance of the majority of active managers, the sometimes usurious fees, the change in teams, and other influences that take up time and effort. The pressure is to explain what they really mean…

Semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML, paint and coating company Sherwin-Williams, and payments company Mastercard are examples of stocks which possess the ‘duration effect’, or the ability to compound their free cash flows over time, according to Eileen Riley, CFA, Co-Portfolio Manager of the Loomis Sayles Global Equity Fund. The following are key take-outs from my recent…

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…

It is an all-too-common occurrence these days that a financial adviser meets a prospective client following a significant inheritance, divorce or in the worst-case death of a partner, with the surviving party having little in the way of financial let alone investment experience. The sheer strength of asset markets in recent years is that almost…

Leading equity manager Martin Currie has suggested the superannuation, advice and wealth management industry may have it all wrong, in its new research piece titled ‘Investing for a sufficient retirement income’. In the paper, chief investment officer Reece Birtles advocates for a “rethink” of the traditional risk-return-dominated approach to portfolio construction, suggesting a “sufficient income…

Why make it so hard? Occasionally, maybe even frequently, we come across investment strategies that are unexplored or even unknown. Naturally, the first port of call is a search engine to see what we can learn. Regrettably the outcome is rarely enlightening. Most have a promo picture and vapid words, a list of the team…

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…

After an impressive rise in 2020, tech stocks have been hit by selling pressure so far this year. One tech sector that has defied the recent trend is robotics and automation. The ETFS ROBO Global Robotics and Automation ETF (ROBO) is up more than 4.9 per cent in the first five months of the year,…

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…

One of the boxes ticked when selecting a fund manager is whether the investment team has its own money in the strategy, or even better, has ownership in the organisation. The logic is self-evident: ‘skin in the game’ should matter. Yet there are, inevitably, drawbacks. The fund’s risk /return appetite may be unduly influenced by…