Harindra de Silva from Allspring Global Investments shares insights with James Dunn from The Inside Network on “What areas of the market are exciting and which are concerning?”
While Australia’s biggest asset owners are “extremely sophisticated” on ESG, the shackles of the idiosyncratic Your Future Your Super (YFYS) benchmarks are still holding them back on portfolio decarbonisation. A micro-debate occasionally rages in the Australian financial landscape about whether we’re behind or ahead of the ESG curve. Certainly we’ve lagged Europe in terms of…
The wave of consolidation racing through the superannuation industry is now raising eyebrows at the prudential regulator. With the massive amounts of FUM being devoured, some funds are suffering indigestion. “This may manifest at the industry level at the point of transfer in a SFT, for example where an administrator has a backlog of transfers…
New York-based Kudu Investment Management has returned to Australia in hopes of pulling off a repeat of its 2020 deal with Channel Capital. “The asset management business is an absolutely beautiful business, to the mind of anybody involved in it. It’s rock solid; it has high margins; and the people are interesting,” says Charlie Ruffel,…
Northern Trust has joined other global custodians in creating a dedicated division for servicing digital assets. Northern Trust’s Digital Assets and Financial Markets group will be led by Justin Chapman, the current global head of Market Advocacy and Research. The new group will combine the teams responsible for supporting digital asset markets with those “dedicated…
The prophets of doom have seen their visions of a downturn realised, but the market is still tremendously expensive when compared with the bursting of previous bubbles. The bubble is finally bursting, but it took a while. It was last June when inflation flashed onto the scene for the first time since the 1970s, rapidly…
Year-to-date, fixed income markets are about as bad as equities. But Michael Leithead, fixed income and senior portfolio manager at EFG Asset Management (EFGAM), is more positive than he’s been “in a long time.” “We’re at a point now where the market has priced in quite a lot of global policy tightening, and that restores…
While most super funds will deliver their members a negative return this year amidst an indiscriminate selloff, they remain well ahead of their long-term objectives. Up until the end of May, returns for the financial year to date “were pretty flat”. But by close-of-business Friday (June 17) a median growth fund would have returned negative…
Market conditions have shifted dramatically in recent months. But while growth strategies have suffered significant pain, value investors are finally proving their bona fides. While total returns for value investing have been reasonable – annualizing 12 per cent over the decade to 31 May – value investors have still struggled to match the stratospheric returns…
While the best financial interests’ duty (BFID) has seen some super funds think twice about ESG,reconciling ESG and responsible investment with best financial interests’ duty isn’t the hurdle some think. One of the more obtuse changes under Your Future Your Super (YFYS) was the insertion of the word “financial” into “best (financial) interests’ duty”. While…
It’s the end of an era as the bear emerges from hibernation. So who’s staying in, and who’s doubling down? It’s fear and loathing season, but equities continue to rally. This is funny to watch, for the simple reason that it gives us an opportunity to imagine the kind of investor partaking in (and driving)…
Labor can do little to change the past. But a win in May could usher in a new era of co-operation between big super and the government. There were no surprises in shadow finance minister Stephen Jones’ speech to the 2022 ASFA conference. There is little that Labor can outright promise the industry aside from…
When it comes to geopolitics, investing isn’t as easy as “ESG”. With the prospect of sanctions leaving investors with stranded Russian assets on the balance sheet, several commentators have suggested this could all of have been avoided if those investors just took the “S” (social) and “G” (governance) in “ESG” more seriously. They believe that…
In the aftermath of Your Future Your Super (YFYS), members of dud funds still aren’t moving their super. And it’s not clear what the government and regulators can do about it. It sometimes seems that so much time was spent on implementing the contentious YFYS reforms that the question of what would happen to members…
Harindra de Silva from Allspring Global Investments shares insights with James Dunn from The Inside Network on “What areas of the market are exciting and which are concerning?”
Harindra de Silva from Allspring Global Investments shares insights with James Dunn from The Inside Network on “What are the lessons from the market’s reactions to Covid-19?”
Harindra de Silva from Allspring Global Investments shares insights with James Dunn from The Inside Network on “Is the ESG rating now a stock’s most important metric?”
Harindra de Silva from Allspring Global Investments shares insights with James Dunn from The Inside Network on “Can the Fed avoid inflation becoming entrenched and maintain growth?”
All fund managers like to talk about protecting capital. At Ruffer Investment Management, it is a more embedded philosophy than most. The firm was founded by Jonathan Ruffer on the principle that “investors like making money, but they hate losing money more.” Ruffer is built to preserve capital for the long-term: centred on “absolute-return investing with a…
In a world of concept stocks and near-meaningless valuation metrics, the trick to beating the market might well be ignoring it. “Hedge funds aren’t supposed to be a high-risk proposition,” says Omkar Joshi, principal and portfolio manager of Opal Capital Management. “They do get cast in a bad light, and that’s because there’s been lots…
While nearly 400 investment factors have been proposed in academic journals since 1960, new research calls into question their practicality – and their ability to earn anybody a performance fee. The rise of quantitative and smart beta investing has also seen an explosion in the number of factors – that is, attributes or traits that…
While big super is all in on its newly-acquired nation building goals, a hint of caution about member outcomes pervaded last week’s AIST Superannuation Investment conference. Industry super funds have been on a decade-long high, with a reputation boosted by their low cost, robust returns, and their easy passage through the Hayne royal commission. But…