There’s an excellent article in the 12 Jan Financial Times on investing in emerging markets…found here. The basic message is that there is no correlation between GDP Growth and stockmarket performance, in fact its slightly negative if anything, so be wary when investing in emerging markets. According to Professor Jay Rittner of the University of Florida, …
Category Archive: Uncategorized
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Jan 08
Current thoughts on some investing risks and themes
We have seen numerous investment trends come and sometimes go over the last X number of years whether it be technology, commerical property, Buffettology, CDOs, high yield, hedge funds, mortgage funds, etc, but at the end of the day a balance of the key investment risks wins through….i.e. the risks relating to equity, liquidity, interest rates, …
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Jan 05
Perhaps House Prices are a bit high in Austraila?
It appears there is a breakdown in the relationship between unemployment and house prices. I hazard a guess that its due to the low home loan interest rates we currently have (see my previous post) but given it appears the Reserve Bank looks like increasing rates further this year, for how long will this breakdown …
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Jan 05
Low Interest Rates for some but not all
Source:RBA The above chart shows the changes in interest rates since the start of 1997 for 3 different bank loans… Credit Card Interest Rates Personal Loan Variable Interest rates Home Loan Standard variable interest rates Now, over the past 18 months we have all heard about ow the banks have not been passing on all …
Jan 02
Common Sense view on Diversification
On December 30, Robert Jaeger wrote an excellent piece on diversification for the Financial Times (article can be found here) that palces a bit of common sense around portfolio construction as it probably should be. As he mentions… In the good old days, asset allocation revolved around three main asset classes: stocks, for long term …
Dec 31
Hello world!
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Dec 24
US New Home Sales Drop…a long way from a strong economy
I think it was last week that the market rose because sales of existing homes significantly increased so there were thoughts around an economy looking better. Unfortunately, overnight the latest report regarding new home sales was that of a fall. Guess what? New homes is a far stronger indicator of the strength of an economy …
Dec 23
The last 12 months….Australian Government Bond Yields
Certainly an interesting 12 months has transpired in financial markets. The above chart shows the movement in the AUstralian Government Bond yield curve and this time last year the sever downward slope indicated the market was expecting the Reserve Bank to drop interest rates to below 3% during 2009. Clearly that didn’t happen but there …
Dec 20
Pension Portfolio Construction
A couple of weeks ago I presented to a large group of financial planners a Case Study on constructing a portfolio for a pension drawdown situation. The case study required an annual drawdown of around 10% of the portfolio balance which given dividend yields, current interest rates, and low expected return potential meant the portfolio …
Dec 16
Consumer Alert – be wary of Omega Watches
I hope I don’t use this forum for my consumer complaints too often, but I have to vent my frustration regarding my Omega Seamaster watch. Despite being a fairly expensive piece of equipment, it was losing around 5 minutes per month so after missing one too many trains I decided to return it to the shop where …