The fight in Ukraine is unlikely to spill over into a shooting war between Russia and the NATO countries. That doesn’t mean impossible, and investors “should absolutely worry about unintended consequences.” For the last month or so, investors have been reading the entrails of a beast they’re broadly unfamiliar with – geopolitics – to determine…
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that equity market returns are likely to be muted going forward. But salvation might arrive in the form of domestic activist strategies. “From a timing perspective, we think the forward-looking environment presents a much more challenging return outlook for equity investors given the extended low interest rate and bull market…
While Liberals and Labor have sparred for decades, it seems that many Australians believe the ideological conflict waged over superannuation is mostly moot. The super wars have raged unchecked since the introduction of the superannuation guarantee (SG) in the heady days of 1993. But the ideological battles in Parliament and the press have been waged…
APRA’s orthodoxy on scale and its importance to funds has been disputed by all comers, with “massive and passive” a common refrain. But the regulator is hoping to prove that bigger really is better. One of the more controversial moments of Helen Rowell’s career as APRA’s superannuation executive was the claim that any fund below…
Fifteen years ago, Thomas Friedman said that globalisation had finally made the world “flat” and that a golden age of prosperity was upon us. A month ago, that stopped being true. Love him or loathe him (and many lean towards the latter), Thomas Friedman occasionally hits the nail on the head. In his 2005 book…
In a world where the fundamentals of long-term market dynamics have “lost relevancy”, institutional investors are pondering a wall of worry – and having trouble figuring out how to climb it. A survey of the world’s largest institutional investors at a time like this will deliver some gloomy responses. Indeed, many investment officers seem to…
UniSuper’s decision to dip its toe into venture capital is all about members. The question is whether the fund will go further down a road that few others have tread. It’s an investment that would barely move the dial on overall returns, but the $75 million that UniSuper has tipped into early-stage commercialisation manager Uniseed…
Many listed managers have been dragged back to earth in the recent spate of market volatility, but Morningstar believes some of the strongest names are oversold – and that they’ll soon mount a recovery. It’s the classic path from (somewhat) overhyped to (heavily) oversold. The share price of Magellan has fallen some 74 per cent…
The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) has argued that funds should be permitted to use their operational risk financial reserve (ORFR) to upgrade their systems and prevent future risks earlier. The “blunt” 0.25 per cent of fund capital that funds must hold in their ORFR is now becoming a “very significant sum” for some…
Apostle’s People and Planet fund was tailor-made for Statewide Super’s members – and has interesting implications for an industry trying to meet a new wave of demand for sustainable options. Two years ago, many institutions were still outsourcing their socially responsible investing (SRI) to AMP Capital or Pendal. But the Boe Pahari controversy saw…
