Comment

Despite their unprecedented nature, there has been little challenge to the conventional wisdom surrounding the profound shocks of the last two years. In his new monthly column, Rob Prugue shakes up the debate.

Pandemics, invasions, and the return of inflation. If the last few years have shown investors anything, it’s that outrageous predictions can often be anything but.

Cracks are showing in the old way of doing things. Being able to make money in a sideways market – and do it without equities – will now be the great differentiator.

For every government that wants to work alongside superannuation funds, there’s one waiting in the wings to deliver a regulatory rebuke. Big super needs to think hard about its plans to build the future.

The old ideological battlelines are being drawn up once again in preparation for three more years of fist fighting over Australia’s retirement savings.

Ninety One is relatively cautious on emerging markets from a top-down perspective, preferring bottom-up selection in a complex global environment, which we see as having distinct winners and losers.

As the new Labor Government explores pathways to 15 per cent, the superannuation industry needs to examine whether that’s really in the best interests of members.

It’s the end of an era as the bear emerges from hibernation. So who’s staying in, and who’s doubling down?

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…

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s proxy reforms have been blown out of the water. The question that remains is why they were ever proposed in the first place. The decision to disallow Frydenberg’s proxy advice regulations marks the end of a deeply weird saga where Treasury tried to annihilate an entire industry – that barely anybody had…