Forum Fodder

Our regular Forum Fodder email alerts Members to what’s new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.

The most recent Forum Fodder email is below. To see see past Fodder emails, click here.

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Best wishes
The Portfolio Construction Forum team

We’re delighted to confirm the Forum’s live hybrid programs for 2021.

What’s “hybrid”? Essentially, it means flexible i.e. you choose how and where it best suits you to participate:

• 1. face-to-face as one a studio audience in Sydney (numbers can increase as restrictions ease)
  If you prefer, you can mix and network face-to-face with Faculty and fellow delegates by joining us at our new iTV studio at the University of New South Wales campus. There will be 250 seats available for Markets Summit and we expect this will increase for other programs through 2021 as Covid restrictions ease further.

• 2. join a group that attends the live online broadcast together in an offsite location
  You may prefer to organise a group, or accept an invitation to join a group organised by one of our Faculty Partners, and attend the live broadcast at an offsite location e.g. boardroom or hotel room. We had many groups do this around Australia for Strategies Conference 2020 at the end of September, and it worked really well, with attendees enjoying the continuing education, camaraderie and networking without having to travel.

• If you wish to facilitate a group, please contact us.

• 3. attend the live online broadcast on your own
  If you prefer to attend our programs from the comfort of your own desk, that’s fine too. This was a popular option when we asked Strategies Conference attendees what their preference was for the future, with fully 45% saying they preferred to attend online in future.

And of course, you can mix it up! e.g. attend one program live “in-studio”, another as part of a group in an offsite location, and another from the comfort of your office.

Whatever attendance option you choose, CE/CPD hours will be provided in the same quantity. Of course, registration fees will differ for attending as part of the studio audience, versus via the live online broadcast.

What programs are we talking about?

Our three flagship open invitation programs are spread fairly evenly through 2021. Each focuses primary on one of our 5 Knowledge Domains of portfolio construction. While the delivery format of each has been fully redesigned into a hybrid format as described above, our absolute commitment to specialist, experienced and independent curation of an unparalleled faculty of subject matter experts from around the world - academics, consultants, practitioners and investment professionals - presenting live online from overseas or locally from our studio.

• Markets Summit 2021 “Back to the drawing board” | Wed 03 March 2021
  Established in 2009, Markets Summit is THE investment markets scene setter of the year. The program features 20+ leading investment thinkers - geopolitical specialists, economists, market/asset class experts, and investment strategists - from around the world, offering their best high conviction ideas on the drivers of and outlook for the markets (on a three- to five-year view) in the context of the theme - and the implications for portfolios. Markets Summit will help you better understand the key drivers of and outlook for the markets (geopolitical, economic and asset class), and the opportunities and risks ahead, to aid your search for return and to help you build better quality investor portfolios.

• Finology Summit 2021 “Investing biases, beliefs and behaviours” | Wed 19 May 2021
  Established in 2016, Finology Summit is THE behavioural finance (“fin”) and investment psychology (“ology”) program of the year. The program features an exceptional Faculty of experts from around the world, each offering their best high conviction ideas on behavioural finance and/or investor psychology, and the investment implications. Finology Summit will help you better identify and understand how your own and other people’s different investing biases, beliefs and behaviours impact investment markets and portfolio construction practices - and therefore, investment outcomes - to help you build better quality investor portfolios.

• Strategies Conference 2021 (Theme TBC) | Wed-Thu 18-19 August 2021
  Established in 2002 - this will be the 20th! - Strategies Conference has gained a reputation as THE portfolio construction strategies conference of the year. Our Faculty of 40+ leading investment thinkers - portfolio managers, CIOs, senior investment analysts, investment strategists, economists, independent consultants and practitioners - from around the world each offers his/her best, high conviction idea on contemporary and emerging portfolio constructions strategies, in the context of the program theme to help you build better quality investor portfolios.

One of the benefits - and challenges, but we do love a challenge - that 2020 has brought has been the opportunity to reset how we go about everything. The Forum was an early adopter of Zoom so we had several years experience with it when Covid struck. Now of course, we’re all Zoom experts now (although it’s surprising how often that “You’re on mute” thing still happens). It is odd that a simple phone call has become something of a novelty these days.

Forum Zoominars are different! They retain the “essence” of our live face-to-face programs, and are very interactive.

Forum Zoominars in 2021

• Research Roundtable | Building investment committee knowledge & skills
  Zoom really suits this “small group” program! Research Roundtable is a unique, by invitation-only meeting for senior, experienced practitioners who design and build multi-manager portfolios that include (but are not necessarily limited to) managed funds from a range of funds management firms – and, importantly, who sit on an investment committee. It is an interactive 3.5-hour, moderated, Investment Committee “case study” in partnership with Zenith Investment Partners. We were delighted to have been able to expand the attendees beyond just Melbourne and Sydney as was the case pre-2020, with people attending from across Australia and New Zealand. We’ll host 10 meetings in 2021.

• If you sit on an investment committee and would like to be considered for a place at a Research Roundtable, please let us know (reply to this email).

• Research Symposium - Building investment management analyst knowledge
  Research Symposium is an open invitation program (complimentary to all Forum members) presented in associated with Macquarie Business School and CIMA Society of Australia. Held three times in 2021, for 90 minutes each time, these lunchtime Forum Zoominars focus on presenting and debating research on an issue involved in designing and building investment portfolios.

• All Things Considered - Debating principles to inform defensible investing
  All Things Considered is an open invitation Forum Zoominar program (complimentary to all Forum members). It consists of four 60-minute sessions in November 2021. It will challenge your portfolio construction beliefs, helping you identify which remain valid and which require new thinking, to inform your investing knowledge, beliefs and behaviours and help you build better quality investor portfolios.

The Forum offers a growing range of on-demand certificate courses, with more to be released in 2021.

Investment Management Analyst Certificate

Our flagship on-demand certificate course is the acclaimed "Investment Management Analyst Certificate course which is the foundation education program for those undertaking CIMA certification in the Asia-Pacific.
Enrolments for the 2021 intake close 31 Jan 2021 | Find out more

The core of the Forum’s subscription service is our extensive online, on-demand Forum CE Library. Complimentary for all Forum members, it offers over 575 CE/CPD hours of accredited learning resources.

• The CE/CPD hours you earn can be used to help meet the CE/CPD requirements of 20 governing bodies (regulators, associations, and institutes), including ASIC, APRA, FASEA, AFA, FPA and CIMA CE/CPD requirements, to name a few.

• You can access your CE/CPD certificates via your complimentary Forum MyCE record where you can store, view, print and export your CE/CPD 27/7 earned via the Forum - as well as any CE/CPD hours you have earned from learning activities hosted our CE Accreditation Partners.

• Did you know you can now also upload any other CPD you earn (i.e. non-Forum accredited) to your Forum MyCE record so it becomes your “source of truth” learning record store of all your CE/CPD?