Analysis

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…

In what a specialist consultant and Bitcoin trading firm, Goldbaum & Partners, sees as the development of an emerging asset class in ‘digital assets’, there may well be a challenge to the characteristics exhibited over the years by gold. It comes at a time when gold is being spruiked as a legitimate investment for institutions….

comment by Greg Bright There’s a reason that the big APRA-regulated super funds didn’t get hauled over the coals by the banking royal commission. They didn’t have anything to hide. The profit-for-member funds were unscathed compared with banks, quasi banks and bank-tainted commercial funds which had embedded financial advice. The super fund sector has been…

The world’s largest fund managers last week shone a spotlight on the difficulties the industry faced as two of them reported their second-quarter earnings results to US brokers and investors. Both BlackRock and State Street suffered further revenue declines in fee revenues. But BlackRock chief executive, Larry Fink, and State’s Street’s Ron O’Hanley were upbeat…

ASX-listed exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded products, such as actively managed listed funds, have become a phenomenon in the past few years, after a slow start. The latest rankings show that smaller organisations are competing well against the world’s largest fund managers. BetaShares, one of those smaller organisations, has observed in its latest industry-wide report, for…

The European alternative assets market is thriving despite a general air of gloom descending on the increasingly fractured continent, according to a new report from global hedge fund research house Preqin. Mark O’Hare, Preqin founder and chief executive, says in the report that “economic growth is not the same thing as activity and opportunities in…

Investors have long worried about ‘bubbles’ and ‘busts’. But there are also stocks which could be termed ‘anti bubble’. In its latest client note, Research Affiliates, the US-based smart-beta specialist, which opened an office in Melbourne last year, the authors, including the firm’s famous founder, Rob Arnott, define the landscape. In the current environment, after…

by Greg Bright The news that Statewide Super exited a three-way merger with Tasplan and WA Super and Tasplan immediately announced talks with MTAA Super, followed by Hostplus disclosing it was talking to Club Super, are just part of the big and blurry picture. How about this for a rumour: REST Super and Sunsuper? The…

by Greg Bright Artificial Intelligence is coming to the investment world sooner than you think. Vontobel Asset Management, the big Zurich-based global manager, now has a product in beta-testing mode, where its investment committee decisions are based on AI. In fact, the committee members are all avatars. And its returns are top decile. Daniel Seiler,…

by David Chaplin External fund managers barely get a look in on the US$37.8 trillion held by large government-owned investors globally, a new report found. According to the ‘Global Public Investor 2019’ study, almost 70 per cent of the institutions captured by the survey allocate between only zero and10 per cent to external managers. The…