Analysis

by David Chaplin The meteoric ascent of index-investing has yet to seriously distort financial markets and could, by contrast, spark new strategies for active managers, according to Mercer. In its thematic outlook for 2019, the firm says the investor index-rush has not, to date, cancelled out the ‘price discovery’ power of markets or created broader…

It’s the US versus the rest of the world in institutional investment management, new research from Fidelity Investments has found. The US is not as keen as almost all other countries on new technologies, new asset classes and socially responsible investing. The recently-published 11th annual Fidelity Institutional Asset Management global fund manager survey reveals a large…

Almost since indices were invented, primarily as a form of measurement, their power to influence the behaviour of market participants and therefore the whole market as defined by those indices has been well understood and sometimes criticised, particularly plain vanilla market-cap indices. But in the past five years this power has considerably weakened, according to…

Jeremy Grantham, 80, is all over the science of studying climate change and he doesn’t like what he sees. But, true to his famous fund manager roots, he is able to look at the investment implications and opportunities, while throwing some barbs at ostrich-like policy makers along the way. In a rare webinar for Australian…

by Greg Bright The proposed best-of-breed 10-manager panel to choose default funds plus forced amalgamation of funds which have underperformed for a period grabbed the headlines following the Productivity Commission’s final report on superannuation. For some practitioners this masks a missed opportunity. In 2011, when Bill Shorten, as minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, enacted…

Despite an end-of-year slowdown last quarter and lack of market price support for the year, Australia’s ETPs reached another record, up 13 per cent to $40.8 billion in total market cap in 2018. This was due solely to fund inflows. BetaShares is predicting an increase of between 22-34 per cent this year. Alex Vynokur, BetaShares…

Long the poor cousin of commercial and retail sectors of direct property, industrial – in particular warehouses – has been coming to the fore in the past couple of years, thanks to changing consumer buying patterns. Forget the old notion of a dusty warehouse. These are often new buildings, increasingly multi-storied, with robots in abundance….

The business case for diversity among corporates at board and management levels is compelling, according to Research Affiliates, but the investment case requires more work to measure the excess returns from having a culture that embraces diverse and dissenting views. The Californian-based smart-beta manager, which partners with others to implement its strategies, says in a…

With the rise in impact investing – the most active direct investing segment of the ESG trend around the world – a group of 35 North American specialist private equity managers has co-published a report showing how the alpha potential is being realised in the nascent asset class. The report published last month, ‘The Alpha…

Castle Hall has launched the first of three in a series of due diligence ‘primers’ which outline key issues for investors to consider when research managers in a particular asset class or topic area. The consulting and research firm is a specialist global due diligence consultant, with an Australian and New Zealand office run by…

Factor investing continues to expand and mature, based on broadly favourable outcomes and investor satisfaction, but the real test will come, perhaps soon, when the many relatively recent adopters take their factor strategies through a market downturn, according to a new study. This may prove an inflexion point in which, should factor continue to meet…

Institutional investors are more trusting of their fund managers and advisors than individual investors and the level of trust, elsewhere in the world, has generally improved in the past couple of years, according to a global study by the CFA Institute. The study, ‘The Next Generation of Trust’, shows that while the levels of trust have…