Analysis

Big super funds appear to have taken at least one government change to their overall operations in their stride – the compulsion to hold a member annual meeting, with the first necessary before March next year. Some, such as AustralianSuper, CareSuper and UniSuper, have already been holding regular large meetings for members for years, as…

by David Chaplin Even a blind monkey-based manager could outperform the average active fund by simply flinging darts at the stock index chart, according to US academic, Burton Malkiel, 88. His claim, first aired in his classic ‘A Random Walk Down Wall St’, has been used as anti-active ammunition ever since. Later studies actually concluded…

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund (NZS) is overhauling its 10-year old responsible investment (RI) strategy to stay on track with global best practice, after recording a 60bps gain due to its old policy. In its ‘Climate Change Report’ published last week, the NZS says the fund had launched a project dubbed ‘Resetting the Responsible Investment…

Before last week’s positive COVID-19 test, there was little doubt President Trump was on the comeback trail. Amid signs of an economic recovery, positivity around hopes for a vaccine, and progress on another fiscal stimulus package, all was looking up for a second term. Then came the ‘Presidential Debate,’ in which Trump brought Democratic candidate…

A sample of institutional asset owners and fund managers has confirmed their views on the increasing complexity around both asset allocation and the strategies they design. They also confirmed the increasing importance of technology but expressed annoyance at continuing room for improvement in some areas. According to the authors at the study’s promoter, global systems…

Robert Shiller, Nobel laureate in economics, wrote about stories and images being created around new economic events. COVID-19 has thrown up a sequence of images from the past, pushing governments and central banks into unknown territory. This is the current ‘Day After’ narrative. In its views on a post-crisis world, Amundi Asset Management, Europe-based global…

There is a US$550 billion ($764 billion) market that is rarely considered by Australian investors. Convertible bonds (CBs) are barely used locally, while in the US and Europe these are a key component of a growing company’s capital and pension fund portfolios. To appreciate this market, we must consider why CBs make sense for an…

One of the great investment success stories of the last 25 years has been the exchange-traded fund (ETF), which got under way in the early 1990s as a vehicle offering access in one listed stock, to the entire stock market through tracking an index. Gone were the worries of paying “active” management fees and failing…

With the end of the month comes another round of investment manager portfolio updates. This week we move our attention to tech company valuations, with the Nasdaq 100 down close to 7% in the last month. The August updates from Hyperion Asset Management, one of the top-performing global equity strategies over the last 12 months,…

While investing following strong and integrated ESG principles does not readily spring to mind when considering China there is more action going on across the sustainability space there than many people think. The building blocks are already in place: a growing green credit market that is encouraging companies to invest in ESG-related projects, strategic government…

It seems as if Japan does not get a lot of respect from external investors, for good reasons. The Nikkei index appears to disprove the theory that the sharemarket delivers superior long-term investment returns, being at the same level now that it was back in 1991. Almost 31 years on from its record high, the…

It’s not only big super funds, such as Australian Super, which have taken a stick to Rio Tinto over the destruction of a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia, forcing the departure of the chief executive, head of iron ore and head of corporate affairs. ESG-orientated fund managers have also been…