I read the following comment this morning in the Money Management daily enews…Market Neutral Funds Underrated: Zenith… There is demonstrable portfolio improvement to be had from allocating to market neutral strategies as part of the equity allocation… That says to me that if you want to improve your equities part of the portfolio then replace …
Category Archive: Equities
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Jan 14
Buy-hold strategy may have had its day…I don’t think so
Page 31 of the Australian Financial Review (AFR) today has an article suggesting “that the traditional buy-hold approach to owning shares is dead”…full text, with subscription can be found here. The article’s stated reason for buy-hold is that “in the long run, markets always go up and will provide investors with a good return on …
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Nov 24
Australian Government Bond Yields…seriously low
Source: RBA Just when you think the yield curve can’t get any lower, the last 8 days have taken another 10 to 15bps off. Sharemarkets have obviously dropped on the Euro-debacle and this yield curve demonstrates not only significant interest rate reductions in the months to come but a significantly slowing Australian eonomy thanks to …
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Oct 29
Australian Government Bond Yields…small improvement
The last month has shown a bit of a bounce-back in the sharemarkets but as the above yield curve indicates, so far its more of a dead cat bounce and there’s a long way to go. The yield curve is still negatively sloping to beyond two years indicating the market is expecting a few rate …
Oct 07
Australian Government Bond Yield Curve…not much change
I don’t really have too much to say on this as nothing has really changed too significantly…the market is expecting interest rate cuts with an economy influenced by overseas events. The uncertainty in markets remains huge and its difficult to feel bullish on sharemarkets or the global economy and the downside risks clearly remain as nothing is resolved. …
Sep 27
Slight rise for Australian Government Bonds over last 2 weeks
Source: Bloomberg, RBA The above chart uses price from this morning for the 28 September data and as it shows there has only been a slight improvement in the yield curve over the last couple of weeks so really no significant impact on troubled beliefs at this point in time. Overnight the equity markets were …
Sep 25
Reducing Equity Risk with Bonds
Earlier in the week I was at a meeting whereby one of the attendees suggested that in a balanced portfolio (~70% equities) the equities proportion adds around 90% of the risk, and then in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review I see a headline quote from Stephen Nash (FIIG Securities) that said, “If investors replaced half their …
Sep 22
Europe equity markets getting smashed…
…and US futures not looking much better. The Euro Stoxx 50 is down 4.4% at the time of writing; UK, German, French, and Spanish equity markets are all down more than 4.3%. The S&P500 futures are down around 1.5% and Australia’s SPI200 is also down around 1%. Plenty of downside risk yet whilst politicians kick …
Sep 10
A few thoughts on investment strategy for today
With the US heading towards recession and the Euro Sovereign Crisis getting ugly again where to invest one’s funds has never been tougher. Australian bonds yields are around 4%, meaning they are on PE ratio of 25 which compared to local and global shares, which are currently on forward PEs of around 10, are very …
Aug 19
Another dodgy market update
Obviously a pretty difficult investment environment at the moment. Markets tanking again overnight and following on in Australia this morning. Watching Billabong drop around 25% this morning demonstrates the benefits of diversification…I’d hate to be an adviser with an overweight Billabong position in my client’s portfolio. Anyway I digress. Volatility in the sharemarkets will continue for many …