In the cyber world today, we are somewhere around World War I. There are more than 30 nations with effective cyber forces. Practitioners need to understand the threat cyber weapons pose to markets and investments.

Investors should learn the lessons of history. Looking beyond near-term valuation multiples can help identify the next great winners and also help avoid the losers. Without growth investing, a portfolio is only focusing on only one side of the equation.

The future is, by definition, uncertain, as are financial markets. To prosper in such an environment, we need to be emotionally agile in order to align our values and actions and, in turn, help investors achieve their financial goals.

Businesses adapting successfully to disruption exist across all industries and can be identified irrespective of prevailing market conditions. Finding those with improving earnings outlooks can deliver a future proofed portfolio.

Investors need to entirely rethink their processes, assumptions and research approach, to focus on the cultures of consumers in different markets. Only by thinking like new brands themselves, can investors identify and invest in the next powerful emerging trend.

The impact investment market is growing. There is growing evidence that investing for return while generating a positive impact is a holistic way to create portfolios that are fit for the future.

The Australian (and global economy) is facing decades of significant technological change that will reshape how we work, where we work, and how we relate to each other economically and politically.

The investment opportunity in EM is greater than just the companies domiciled there. In essence, investing in global growth should not simply be defined or determined by where a company receives its mail.

Future proofing portfolios is a difficult task, due to today’s demanding valuations and because the future is intrinsically unknowable. There are no set-and-forget strategies in a world of ever-changing prices.

Research shows that owner-manager businesses reward their long-term (non-family) investors because they instill a stability, a culture, and a focus that is geared towards the long term.

There are many lessons to be learned as we reflect on the 2008 crisis, but the most important is that the challenge was – and remains – political, not economic. Secular stagnation was just an excuse for flawed economic policies.

In the 1950s, Markowitz showed that low or negative correlation is the secret sauce that makes diversification work. While his maths stacks up, the way it is often abused, does not.

The fallacy that an inverted yield curve "predicts" the onset of recessions is alive and well. Many investors believe the curve will invert in 2019, precipitating a recession. But a flattening of the yield curve need not imply a recession.

As we mark the decennial of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, there are still ongoing debates about the causes and consequences of the GFC. By 2020, conditions will be ripe for a new financial crisis.

Portfolio Construction Forum's 23-page submission to FASEA in response to its proposed guidance on future CPD explains why the proposal is fundamentally flawed, and falls well short of any reasonable community expectation of FASEA and what drove its formation.

Markowitz informed us of the risk-reduction advantages of diversification. But just how diversified does an investor have to be to realise almost all of the benefits of diversification?

Simply holding bonds no longer diversifies an investment portfolio, with genuine risk diversification better achieved by exploiting currently under-priced risk premia in volatility and inflation markets.

Future-proofing isn’t about guaranteeing an outcome. No strategy can do that. It's about implementing strategies today that increase the likelihood that multiple objectives, often with different time horizons, can be all achieved.

There will always be movements in markets that we need to be attentive to, and you should construct a portfolio that takes advantage of fear. But don't let that fear drive the dominating principles in your portfolio construction.