Category Archive: General Investment

Feb 20

Excellent long term performance from bonds…but there’s a lot more to it

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 …

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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 …

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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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Jan 10

The change in outlook for the 2011 Australian Economy in one picture

Source: RBA The above chart shows pretty much what happened to the outlook for the Austrlaian economy and why bonds were the best investment for the year. It shows the longer terms yields (3 years and above) dropping by up to 200bps thus providing very large capital gains for bond investors who had the courage …

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Jan 04

Investment Thoughts for 2012

Firstly I think its appropriate to suggest that I intend to make no return predictions for this year as I do believe its pretty much impossible with litte upside for me. However, what I would like to do is simply point out a few facts, rules, and current issues that need to be considered when …

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Dec 19

A few too many ‘China Hard Landing’ stories for my comfort

I’ve read a few too many times how Australia is well positioned because of its exporting links to China and how this should help us escape any serious economic issues flowing out of Europe. Obviously our markets haven’t quite agreed with that with bond yields dropping massively over recent months and our equity market continuing …

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Oct 29

Term Deposit Premium very high again

Source: Reserve Bank of Australia The above chart shows the premium banks are paying for their 3 year term deposits compared to 3 year Australian Government bonds from 1992 to the end of September 2011. Since hitting its aboslute high around the start of 2010 and peaking again around July 2010, term deposits are paying …

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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 …

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Oct 17

SPIVA Results – Active Managers still struggling

I’m quite late in reporting the recent performance of fund managers from my favourite performance report, Standard and Poor’s SPIVA. For those that don’t know the reason why this is my favourite report on fund manager performance is that it considers survivorship. It does this by examining all fund managers at the start of the …

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Sep 26

Sensational Bearish Interview

Found this via Zero Hedge …sensational interview on the BBC with a trader who believes “Goldman Sachs rules the world” and that “this economic crisis is like a cancer, if you just wait and wait thinking this  is going  to go away, just like a cancer its going to grow and its gong to be …

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