The rich just keep getting richer. In Australia, the top 10% now control over 58% of national wealth, while the top 1% own almost half of the nation’s wealth.
The theory behind diversification makes intuitive sense to most investors: by combining assets that don’t move in perfect synchrony, investors can reduce portfolio volatility without necessarily sacrificing expected returns. This accepted truth reshaped portfolio construction in the twentieth century and continues to underpin institutional allocation frameworks today.
Investors have long watched oil prices as a gauge of global inflation, corporate profitability, geopolitical risk, and consumer spending. When it moves sharply in one direction, it’s arguably one of the most heeded signals in the market. When it spikes, the news headlines often predict equity market turmoil. When it collapses, they are more focused on the likelihood of a global recession.
There’s a particular kind of calm that comes from watching your portfolio during a violent market sell-off and feeling nothing. No urge to act. No creeping sense that something is broken. Just the knowledge that what you own was designed to survive moments like this.
The theory behind diversification makes intuitive sense to most investors: by combining assets that don’t move in perfect synchrony, investors can reduce portfolio volatility without necessarily sacrificing expected returns. This accepted truth reshaped portfolio construction in the twentieth century and continues to underpin institutional allocation frameworks today.
Investors have long watched oil prices as a gauge of global inflation, corporate profitability, geopolitical risk, and consumer spending. When it moves sharply in one direction, it’s arguably one of the most heeded signals in the market. When it spikes, the news headlines often predict equity market turmoil. When it collapses, they are more focused on the likelihood of a global recession.
There’s a particular kind of calm that comes from watching your portfolio during a violent market sell-off and feeling nothing. No urge to act. No creeping sense that something is broken. Just the knowledge that what you own was designed to survive moments like this.
When the words ‘hedge fund’ run through investors’ minds, cocaine-fuelled images of Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, may accompany them.
Fair dues. In the past, the global hedge fund sector attracted more than its share of larger-than-life alpha males not known for their ethics or compassion. But that was then and this is now. And with global equity markets getting rockier, investors are increasingly looking for reliable absolute return strategies to protect their portfolios from market volatility.
It’s no exaggeration that asset allocation is the cornerstone of almost all successful investment strategies. In Tony Robbins’ words, ‘Asset allocation, where to park your money and how to divide it up is the single most important skill of a successful investor.’
Unitised funds, which pool investments from multiple investors and invest in a broad portfolio of assets, allow investors to access the in-depth knowledge, research, and ongoing monitoring of professional managers.
As so many investors learn the hard way: markets often take the stairs up and the elevator down. It’s the same with the value of portfolios that were created to fund a certain level of retirement: a few missteps can quickly erode decades of saving and hard work.
Learning from successful professional fund managers is often a shortcut to better investment results. It’s equally informative when there’s a noteworthy shift that brings a previously successful investment strategy into question. Enter the Dalio dilemma.
Index concentration is increasingly becoming a concern for investors worldwide.
Consider the S&P 500 Index, the most popular benchmark for US stocks. Over the past decade, the top 10 companies' share of the index's market value has surged from 14% to 33%. This means investing in the S&P 500 largely hinges on the performance of these top 10 companies, the majority of which are tech giants.
Ask most wealthy people how they built their wealth, and the answers you’ll receive are likely to be obvious and somewhat unexciting rather than sounding like the secret keys to a kingdom of wealth. But therein lies the truth of wealth-building … it’s about taking small, mundane steps in the right direction over the long term.
The mortgage fund asset class has grown and matured in recent years. For good reason. Mortgage funds often offer investors attractive risk-adjusted returns by virtue of their superior yields. But as with all asset classes, not all mortgage funds are created equal. The recent challenges experienced by GEMI Capital’s investors provide a timely reminder of what can go wrong in this asset class.
Global tech companies, once focused solely on rapid growth, are now adopting a strategy typical of more traditional value businesses — issuing dividends.
Meta's introduction of its maiden dividend earlier this year marked a significant departure from the tech sector's usual emphasis on buybacks. Shortly after, Salesforce, Booking, and Alphabet followed suit, announcing dividends for the first time.
Financial markets thrive on long term correlations holding for the simple reason it provides high-probability context for investors to make investment decisions. So when a long term correlation breaks down that most investors thought made financial and intuitive sense, it’s generally worth delving deeper.
Multi-asset funds fell out of favour during the prolonged low-interest-rate environment following the 2008 global financial crisis. However, the landscape shifted post-COVID with heightened economic worries prompting a resurgence in multi-asset strategies.