There’s a brief article in today’s Investor Daily News that comments on “Managed Volatility” being the strategy to maximise returns…article here. I have to admit that I believe this strategy will be one of the new trends in equity focused managed funds over the next 12 months or so. Empirical evidence over the years the …
Category Archive: Portfolio Construction
Sep 18
Australian Government Bond Yield Curve…no change???
Source: RBA, Delta Research & Advisory Bizaarely as it seems but the above chart shows that over the last month the Australian Government Bond Yield curve has barely budged. There’s really no more than 5 to 10 bps difference across all terms and when you consider the various big announcements, economic results from here, overseas …
Sep 13
Australian Share Managers – Alpha and Risk Factors
My new company, Delta Research & Advisory, has recently conducted some risk factor analysis of Australian fund managers and it is starting to yield some interesting results. We’ve analysed around 120 managers using Fama/French-like risk factors where thhe value/growth factor is simply MSCI Australian Value index minus MSCI Australia Growth index and the Size factor is MSCI Australia …
Aug 11
Investment Perspectives
Its been a while since I put some of my broader investment thoughts in writing and I’ve just written almost 4000 words to satisfy that…so it also sort of makes up for my lack of posting. So below is a lot of what I have written and hopefully its readable for anyone interested…I actually haven’t …
Jun 27
Australian Equities Style Investing – Value vs Growth
Its been over a week since I posted so I thought I’d write about something that is a little bit different and hopefully may provide a little bit of food for thought. The above chart shows the performance of the MSCI Australia Value index (dominated by low PE stocks) vs MSCI Australia Growth index (dominated …
Jun 10
Infrastructure in an investment portfolio…diversification benefits?
Recent years has seen increased interest in infrastructure being included in investment portfolios. The justification goes that, infrastructure assets provide steady income streams linked to inflation from large, often monopoly assets (like toll roads, airports and the like), with long lifetimes that can reduce the capital volatility. As the following ten year chart shows, global infrastructure (represented …
May 20
Being a millionaire may not be enough for a comfortable retirement
Source: Delta Research & Advisory Pty Ltd The above chart shows the probability of running out of funds in retirement for someone who retires with $1,000,000 in today’s dollar and draws $55,080 each year (ASFA Retirement Standard for a comfortable retirement for a couple), growing at 3% inflation. It is assumed the funds are invested …
Apr 16
Retirement Income Portfolios – poorly understood
One of the debates in the financial services media has been around the investment strategy of superannuation funds and whether they are holding too many equities. In the camp of too many equities is former Head of Treasury, Ken Henry, nd former Chairman of the Future Fund, David Murray; and opposing views have typically been …
Mar 28
Bonds…the best protection from risky markets
Source: van Eyk The above chart shows the 12 month correlation of monthly returns between the UBS Composite index (representing Australian Fixed Interest) and the total return of the S&P/ASX All Ordinaries index (Australian shares). As you can see the correlation between both asset classes is extremely variable and the trendline shows that over the last …
Mar 27
Does our Super have too much in equities?
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked to comment on the asset allocations of default super funds. There’s certainly been a very interesting debate through the print media which was probably started by David Murray, Chairman of the Future Fund, last year when he stated that Austrlaian Super Funds were too heavily invested …