index investing

The Kiwi counterpart of US online direct investment platform Robinhood is sounding out the Australian market for possible expansion. Brooke Roberts, co-founder of the Wellington-based Sharesies, said the firm was recruiting an Australian country manager. “We are looking at launching Sharesies in Australia,” she said. “But at the moment we’re working on a product that…

While the active versus passive debate rolls on, and on, across the investment world, some active managers have gone to the ‘dark side’, at least partially, by adding more quantitative inputs for new strategies, such as thematic investing. The concept of ‘thematic’ investing, which describes the strategy of identifying sectors of the economy expected to…

Notwithstanding the political and superannuation industry talk of an infrastructure-led economic recovery in Australia, and elsewhere, the listed infrastructure sector has been looking decidedly unloved of late. And much of the sector’s underperformance against the broader market this year has not been justified in terms of company earnings. Guiseppe Corona, the London-based head of global…

In hindsight, March 2nd, 2020, as the world started to get to grips with the scale of the global health emergency that was unfolding in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic, was an inauspicious time to launch a new investment product. In fact, the S&P/ASX 200 Index is down 19% since that day – after…

If you’ve seen the movie The Big Short you will remember Christian Bale’s quirky character Michael Burry – the manager of the Scion Capital hedge fund who realises the US mortgage-backed security market is a massive bubble. He goes on to make a fortune by betting on its crash.