News

by Greg Bright Over the next few months the challenge for the major smart beta providers in Australia and New Zealand will change dramatically. It’s not necessarily bad news for investors, though. But it’s not so good, either. The two biggest players in the market, who have been joined at the hip for years, are…

Factor investing – or tilted indices as the strategy used to be known – is becoming increasingly popular with retail investors, largely due to the growth in ETFs. But it is not as simple as it seems. Factor strategies may seem cheap, but there are risks attached. Institutional investors have understood the world of ‘factors’…

To quote the great Bob Dylan, it really does seem ‘the times they are a-changing’ for the Australian wealth management industry. A challenging investment and business climate, building competitive pressure, consolidation, unprecedented scrutiny of performance and fees, increasing regulatory requirements, and a shifting distribution landscape. The need for asset managers and super funds to put…

The Australian hedge fund awards organisers – The Alternative Future Foundation and Hedge Funds Rock – have announced the finalists for their night of nights, taking place in Sydney on September 12. The evening caps off what is generally dubbed ‘hedge funds week’, which includes the annual summit organised by the Alternative Investment Management Association…

by David Chaplin* Later this year, probably, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) of New Zealand will release the findings of a long-awaited review of the country’s custody sector. Securities servicing, as it should be known, has been long neglected by the NZ regulator. The review – understood to have been outsourced to consultancy firm PwC…

Value will come back. It must do. It’s the most persistent of styles, dating back to the research of Benjamin Graham in the 1930s. Its underperformance cannot go on much longer. Surely. Reece Birtles, admittedly biased towards the style, provides a compelling argument as to why the time is now to dive back in. Birtles,…

by David Chaplin BlackRock has laid out the case for a coordinated fiscal and monetary shock policy to defibrillate the global economy as it struggles to register a pulse. In a paper published last week, the BlackRock Investment Institute argues that with both monetary and fiscal losing potency, more radical approaches – such as the…

These stories, thankfully, don’t come along too often. But they do come along. Here’s an entertaining – assuming you weren’t an investor – example of greed, hubris and a lavish lifestyle. And what better place to bring those factors together than in California? In its latest client note, Castle Hall, the global due diligence firm,…

John Peterson, an institutional advisor and investor who runs the Peterson Research Institute, has been monitoring like-for-like actual investment options offered by two big super funds, which track the relative performances of active versus indexed strategies. Here is his latest update, which shows active options widening their lead over passive during longer periods. In a…

The big super funds which take part on National Australia’s Bank’s two-yearly survey about currency management have exhibited a significant upgrade in their views and intent with respect to foreign currency. “It’s no longer a binary – passive or active – decision. It is much more nuanced and integrated in the whole investment process. There…

While quantitative managers, on average, had a rough trot during 2018, including the popular alternative risk premia strategy managers, new work indicates that certain styles will be more resilient in the current market climate, performing better in the event of investor ‘crowding’. A study, by Nick Baltas, head of R&D for systematic trading strategies at…

In a sample using UK stocks, Axioma, the global investment risk advisory firm, points back to some tried and true fundamental beliefs but adds a couple of new ones to assess the likely future behaviour of factors. The firm is rolling out an updated risk model (Version 4), starting with the UK in a blog…