Investors say they want to build resilient portfolios but all they’re doing is making them robust. And that’s not enough to come back better from a downturn.
Traditional portfolio construction might be dead. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to beat inflation, even as investors anticipate it will continue to rise and fall over the next decade.
Super fund trustees are throwing their full weight behind nation building projects where they feel their funds can get a competitive return, while the Coalition’s competing super for housing policy has been labelled “elitist”.
The Coalition wants to take the upper hand in the often emotional superannuation wars. Nation building and the new objective of super give it the perfect opportunity.
ASFA’s 2023 conference began with a pessimistic but realistic view of what investors can expect. They either need to build more resilient portfolios, trade more or “nail their colours to the mast and sail”.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers appears to have set himself another impossible task: ending the super wars. But legislating an objective for superannuation and urging funds to take part in nation building projects will only inflame them.
If the Albanese Government gets its way, superannuation will finally have a true objective. But actually legislating it will mean navigating a semantic minefield.
Osmosis IM was started with the belief that resource efficient companies would outperform their more wasteful peers. Fourteen years later it’s landed what’s likely the largest new ESG mandate in history.
It’s too soon to call the death of traditional portfolio construction even as an apparent new investment paradigm makes it more challenged. Investors should instead stay ‘humble students of the market’.
Magellan has flagged acquisitions and the addition of alternatives strategies as part of a five-year plan to reclaim the $100 billion plus heights it last scaled in 2021.
