Apr 24
The biggest market in the world, often represented by the S&P 500 index, crashed pretty quickly from 24 February reaching its bottom on 23 March. This fall, in US Dollars, was around 34%. Since then, it has bounced back by around 25% after almost 5 weeks … not a bad turnaround, but obviously not back …
Mar 19
Its clearly been a long time since I updated this blog and perhaps this current crisis makes most sense to make a comeback; particularly given I started this blog not long after the worst of the GFC (Jan 2009 to be precise). Anyway, the current crisis has clearly required a global response to slow down …
May 31
Over the years having worked in consulting and research I have been sent countless portfolios for opinion. Virtually all portfolios have followed a pre-defined asset allocation aligned to a specific risk profile but occasionally that is where the alignment ends. This is because the investments selected bear little to no relationship with their desired characteristics …
Apr 27
Background After capital market forecasts and assessing investor objectives, the current method for portfolio construction starts with the asset allocation decision followed by investment selection. In the Australian financial planning industry, it widely accepted that the asset allocation decision is responsible for most of the portfolio performance variability, and it is, rightly or wrongly, regarded …
Mar 14
Diversification is one of the central tenets of investment management and fundamental beliefs across the global financial planning industry. Its validity was set in stone by Harry Markowitz in his PhD dissertation and 1952 Journal of Finance article, Portfolio Selection, which demonstrated the effects of combining uncorrelated assets … i.e. improvement in the portfolio’s return …
Jan 14
The following article was published by Professional planner Magazine a couple of months ago and whilst can be found on their website by clicking here … the original article follows. Background One of the biggest trends in the financial planning today is the shift towards managed accounts. This is primarily an exercise in increasing efficiencies …
Aug 29
Background For quite a few years now, many commentators and researchers have criticized active strategies that charge active fees to receive benchmark-like returns. If a portfolio looks a lot like the benchmark it is trying to outperform, it doesn’t mean there won’t be outperformance, but after taking fees into consideration it is much more difficult. …
Aug 17
Background When disappointing performance occurs, alarm bells will typically ring in the minds of investors, advisers, asset consultants and perhaps the managers themselves. Investing has only ever been a long game but thanks to the internet, the 24-hour news cycle, social media, etc. etc., it appears that success is expected to occur quickly and this …
Mar 30
It’s well known that the Australian equity market is only around 2% of Global equity markets. When we have allocations that overweight the Australian equities asset class compared to the Global equities asset class in our portfolios, it is typically justified due to the benefits of franking credits, higher dividends, and perhaps familiarity. The primary risks associated with …
Nov 14
Background There’s a widely held belief that to create alpha (i.e. positive returns after adjusting for risk…let’s say market risk), a manager needs to make meaningful bets away from the market. That is, stop being a “benchmark hugger”, concentrate the portfolio with best ideas, and/or move the portfolio holdings away from the benchmark and possibly …