Analysis

With equities and bonds both fully priced, investors are increasingly looking at alternative strategies. A new one, although difficult to access, is ‘greenfields infrastructure’. According to David Neal, the chief executive of IFM Investors and a former CIO and chief executive of the Future Fund, the conundrum for investors was well expressed by Stein’s Law…

AustralianSuper is no longer the underdog. The question is what becomes of the industry fund culture when industry funds “are the status quo”. As Australia’s first $200 billion+ megafund, AustralianSuper is no longer the upstart born of the 2006 merger of the Australian Retirement Fund (ARF) and the Superannuation Trust of Australia (STA). It’s also…

As a far-reaching regulatory crackdown rolls through Asian markets, Elizabeth Soon, portfolio manager for PineBridge, leans on one key lesson from her thirty years in equity markets: volatility brings opportunity. “People become fearful when markets fall and they sell, but they become fearless during a bull market even when valuations don’t justify it,” Soon says….

Despite APRA’s move to name and shame 13 underperforming funds, it’s clear that Your Future Your Super (YFYS) is a work in progress. More needs to be done to make it a true and fair test. Call them the Dirty (Baker’s) Dozen: 13 funds named and publicly shamed for their failure of the YFYS performance…

Global central banks are developing a stronger appetite for external fund managers to oversee a wide range of asset classes held on their ballooning balance sheets, a new study has found. According to the 2021 Global Public Investor (GPI) survey produced by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), central banks “are becoming far…

The negative correlation between bond and equity returns is taken as scripture in financial markets. But Capital Fund Management (CFM) warns that the times may be changing.   The negative correlation between bond and equity returns is the (relatively) simple idea that when equities go down, bonds go up, allowing bonds to act as a…

Australia’s direct lending market is set to take off as the big banks withdraw and investors realise the vast opportunities offered by the businesses that form the backbone of corporate Australia. “We want to grow this market, because we believe we’re offering something that’s going to be highly beneficial to investors in Australia in the…

Imminent climate disclosure obligations could dent fund manager profits by up to 1 per cent while increasing retail manager fees as much as 2.2 per cent, according to an NZ Government report. Analysis by New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) was released along with the final select committee report on the Financial…

The investment world has its fair share of clever spin doctors, such as the investment banks behind the ‘BRICs’ and ‘PIGS’ of years past. Some intriguing labels are now coming out of the budding impact investing sector. Mark Berryman, the managing director of impact and sustainable investing at US advisory firm Caprock Group, offered up…

Early stage investors are starting to broaden their appetite for carbon-reducing new technologies, looking for opportunities in nascent industries such as plant-based foods. According to the latest figures from Preqin, the global alternatives research house, the value of capital raisings in the niche segment of ‘alternative meat’ increased sixfold between 2019 and 2020 to US$206…

The term ‘big data’ has not resonated with investors in the way that the term ‘artificial intelligence’ has. Marrying the two helps. Now applying them to the ESG trend helps a lot more. Andy Moniz, a quantitative fund manager with a pedigree in data science, says he never much liked the term ‘big data’. The…

With an uptick in interest in hedge funds following better performance during covid-19, bfinance has produced a study on how big investors have adapted their hedge fund portfolios. The global manager search and research firm says that institutional investor sentiment towards hedge funds has been “noticeably more positive in 2021, supported by double-digit gains [in…