Investor Education Articles

It’s been a challenging year for most investors with sharply higher interest rates leading to significant underperformance in asset classes which used to be regarded as defensive such as government bonds. The rules of the game have been turned on their head.

The recent Australian Consumer Sentiment Snapshot reveals Aussie consumers have one particular economic factor front of mind… inflation. The inflation monster is impacting upon consumers’ disposable incomes, and more importantly it’s causing havoc in consumers’ minds where it’s doing most of its insidious work. It’s this growing awareness and fear of inflation which suggests we may be on track for inflation to trend higher than markets (and central bankers) currently believe. If that is indeed the case, the investment implications are significant…

Australia has a famously large population of highly qualified fund managers considering the size of the country. According to KPGM, Australia’s 647 fund management groups manage $4.3 trillion across 6,451 products. That represents around $170k under management for each and every Australian resident, so it’s a sizeable portion of the nation’s wealth. This translates into opportunity for individual investors who know what to look for in the vast smorgasbord of fund management options at their disposal.

It’s not often the management of companies which outperform in the extreme share the secrets of their success with the investment world at large. When it happens, it pays to sit up and listen. For investors, these conversations provide valuable clues as to how to identify the management teams of future multi-baggers.

Strange times are afoot in financial markets with contradictory assumptions being priced into various asset classes. Here’s a great summary of the confusion investors must contend with at present… In the words of Charlie Munger, <i>‘If you're not a little confused about what's going on, you don't understand it.’

Picking the right fund manager to manage your assets is arguably an underrated and under-discussed process which is as complex as stock picking. As with all financial decisions, it’s important to ensure your fund managers’ strategy and process aligns with your risk appetite, return objectives, and time horizon. You’ll also want your fund managers to have conviction in what they’re doing. On that front, there’s one question investors you can ask prospective fund managers which reveals their genuine conviction level above all other questions… do you have skin in the game?

It’s long been recognised that stock markets have a habit of making intelligent people look stupid. The fundamental reason is simple but often ignored… share price movements can be wild and unpredictable, and often confound investor’s expectations. And yet, with investors increasingly watching their stock price movements like hawks the temptation to account for unexpected stock moves with rational explanations often leads to sub-optimal results.

The baby boomers have long been recognised as the wealthiest generation ever. But as per the famous expression, you can’t take it with you. With baby boomers’ ages ranging from fifty-nine to seventy-seven, there’s no escaping the fact we’re close to witnessing a passing of their wealth to the next generation. Given the extent of this impending wealth transfer, the investment implications of this thematic are worth being aware of.

Aussie investors are generally overweight equities so establishing the right timeframe for equity investment is a common question. It’s also core to ensuring your portfolio delivers the performance you want and deserve. And with average holding periods moving in the wrong direction, the chances are high that many investors are leaving valuable returns on the table. So it could well be time to ask yourself… what’s the right timeframe for investing in equities?

Most successful investors will testify to the fact that selecting outperforming stocks is as much about identifying high quality management teams as it is about analysing the numbers, arguably more so. With outperformance in mind, one of the leading indicators of a high quality management team is their ethics. It’s an area worthy of investor attention.

When US Fed chairman Jerome Powell admitted last year, ‘We now understand better how little we understand about inflation,’ it confirmed what many investors suspected…inflation is a more complex beast than most people, including central bankers, realise.

Are you considering diving into tokenised investments, but having reservations about their connection to blockchain—the technology that underpins all cryptocurrencies? Rest assured, you're not the only one. Since scaling meteoric highs in 2021, cryptocurrencies have been weathering a period of price volatility, putting some investors off investing in anything blockchain related.