A look at the average returns of bonds over the last 30 years does not suggest that equity returns have really been worth the risk. Table 1 shows the returns on Australian Bonds (Aust Comm Bank All Series/All Maturities) versus the accumulated return of the Australian sharemarket (S&P/ASX 200 TR) and whilst equities have the better performance …
Tag Archive: portfolio construction
Jan 25
Managing Market Risk using Variable Beta Funds
Lonsec have a reasonable investment strategy paper released today (subscription required) suggesting one of the best ways of managing equity market risk is to use variable beta managers. A variable beta manager is a manager who has the ability to significantly change their exposure to the market depending on their view. So if a variable …
Jan 19
“Market Neutral Strategies as part of the Equity Allocation”…huh???
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 …
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 …
Nov 07
My day at the Portfolio Construction Academy
Last Friday I attended a day long program with around 80 researchers, financial advisers, and other financial professionals as part of a 5 day portfolio construction program run by Graham Rich over a 12 month period. Friday’s program was divided into three parts… Investment Fables Asset Allocation using Scenario Modelling Greece Each part went for …
Oct 29
Australian Equities Fund Manager Style over time
A couple of weeks ago I did a post showing Fama French 3 Factor analysis on some of the leading Australian Equities fund managers. The analysis covered returns from June 2003 to September 2011 so it obviously covered a mixture of markets…bull bear and sideways. I just completed the same analysis but this time I …
Oct 14
Australian Equity Manager’s Investment Style…maybe not all true to label
Its been a little while since I wrote anything on managed fnds. Yesterday I attended a series of presentations at Griffith University whereby undergrad students presented results of their previous few months working in financial services. Some of the results were very interesting including how many global fund managers demonstrated a different investment style than …
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 …
Apr 14
A lack of Global Small Cap investing???
International equity small-cap stocks widely outperformed large-cap stocks over the year to September 2010, returning 24.4 per cent and 12.7 per cent, respectively in US dollar terms. I took the above from today’s InvestorDaily email and whilst the fact that global small cap outperformed large cap is not surprising, as it is bound to happen …
May 28
A simple look at pension portfolio construction
An article that should appear in IFA magazine over the coming weeks the article can be found here. Basically, its a simple look at how traditional investment risks are exacerbated by the pension drawdown situation and it has a simple recommendation to combat these risks (timing, volatility, and high inflation)…yep…inflation linked annuities. Send article …