I’m always being approached by fund managers pitching their latest or greatest fund and many of them appear quite good with impressive people, performance, and/or process. Every now and then I see a fund that to me makes little sense and the latest to annoy me is the generic Asian Fund of Hedge Fund…I haven’t …
Category Archive: General Investment
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Nov 02
The RBA goes up and so does the Yield Curve
Normally I try and produce the chart before the RBA’s decision but was a little slow this time but it is a little intersting to see the market’s reaction to the RBA’s decision to increase the cash rate to 4.75% and its shown in the chart above…an increase in yields across the all maturities although …
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Oct 25
Favour Global Equities??? Yes and No
Got a few quotes in the Investor Daily today…click here …the article suggests I favour global equities which I do but I don’t. I’m certainly skeptical of the global equity upside potential but the main basis to my thoughts are that global equity markets have far greater diversification than the Australian market which is really …
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Sep 04
Active versus Passive net cash flow
I found the above chart in an article at marketwatch.com and it shows the net cash flows of both active and passive managed funds in the US over the last 10 years. As can be seen, whilst passive funds (or index funds) have had positive flows every single year, actively managed funds have had massive …
Aug 30
Simple Economic Update
The month of July saw the return of strong sharemarkets both in Australia and overseas with the first positive monthly performance for four months. This return of confidence was largely due to investors reacting positively to the European Banking stress tests where 92% of European banks tested passed. Alongside of the good sharemarket performance was …
Aug 27
Jonathan Pain slams fund manager benchmarking
Apparently Mr Pain is of the belief that equity managers should have benchmarks that are more aligned with their client’s needs and therefore, as far as I can tell, have more of a cash plus or absolute return benchmark. Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted the report but anyway… …whilst on face value this sounds quite reasonable as …
Aug 02
A Need for Style Indices and/or more Style Biased Passive Funds
According to Morningstar, the best performing Australian equities fund over the last 10 years is the Dimensional Australia Value Trust. In this competition of winners, where only the biggest or best have survived, the Dimensional fund has outperformed 44 other funds, including those value giants, Perpetual, Tyndall and Investors Mutual and and different styled behemoths …
Jul 20
Great to know these guys are paid a fortune
Strategists June 2011 forecasts for the S&P/ASX 200 Deutsche Bank 6250 UBS 5800 Citigroup 5500 Goldman Sachs 5375 Macquarie 5068 JP Morgan 5000 Morgan Stanley 5027* Credit Suisse 5000* Merrill Lynch 4500* Average 5302 points Source: AFR 1 July 2010. *December 2010 forecasts – no June 11 forecasts provided With such variance amongst the so-called …
Jul 20
Latest Article for Publication – Guaranteeing Investment Success
I have just submitted an article, on behalf of my employer, to the Australian version of the Journal of Financial Advice. Its a fairly simple message….advisers could better look after their client’s financial needs and goals by increasing their focus on their client’s cash flow needs as opposed to the focus on investment strategy. I know …
Jul 08
A short simple end of financial year review
Sharemarkets both here and around the world showed solid performance over the last 12 months despite the lingering effects of the Global Financial Crisis in the form of sovereign debt concerns in Southern Europe. The performance of Global Shares was 5.3%[1] in the year to 30 June 2010 although the last 3 months declined by …