Analysis

A panel of experts has pointed to energy, illiquid assets and retirement income as three areas where super funds need to lift their game, with stakeholders expecting the “huge amount of capital” now in the system to contribute to Australian society.

Big institutions live and die by their data, but State Street finds that very few have a strategy for acquiring and managing it while many are lagging in their technology investment.

The outgoing chair of Australia’s sovereign wealth fund has come out swinging against “self-styled experts” with “foolhardy schemes” to spend the $200 billion it manages, warning that winding up the Future Fund will leave the government – and future generations of Australians – worse off.

For the last decade, equities (repackaged and otherwise) have reigned supreme. But in a market where everything might soon start to break, investors have to be more nimble.

The “well-intentioned and genuine” claims super funds made about their sustainable bona fides have landed them in the regulators’ crosshairs. They’re going to have to figure out how to actually follow through on them if they want to win the battle for members’ retirement savings.

Value investing is a lonely road, especially for those practitioners who are looking for real deep value rather than small arbitrages. The stocks they buy are very unloved, and they can stay that way for some time, while everyone else in the market thinks they are nuts.

The NZ Superannuation Fund (NZS) now manages about 30 per cent of its assets internally, with some of them in the capable hands of a new artificially intelligent portfolio manager dubbed “Keorangi”.

Biodiversity loss could threaten more than 50 per cent of global gross domestic product, but the amounts spent on reversing it pale in comparison to investment in clean energy.

Markets could be asked to absorb a lot more debt as central banks lighten their balance sheets. But as governments continue to issue it, nobody knows whether unwinding can be done in an orderly manner.

The CIO Is still considered the shot caller, but the fundamental changes that the super system is experiencing means funds could adopt a more diffuse operational model and power will shift away from the “masters of the universe”.

The aggressive sell off in US bonds has prompted many to speculate that interest rates have adjusted upwards on a structural basis. But Ninety One investment strategist Russell Silbertson takes a different view.

Institutional investors feel ready for anything markets might throw at them, according to a new report from Mercer. But while they still want to manage money themselves, a lot of them don’t know if they’re any good at it.