At Strategies Summit in August 2024, a diverse panel of asset class experts debated the implications of four medium-term scenarios. Now, practitioners need to re-visit their medium-term outlook for investment markets.

Green bonds have outperformed conventional bonds for five of the last seven years and their potential for positive outcomes during central banks cutting cycles make them a compelling investment.

While the global economy is on track for a soft landing over the next 12 to 18 months, high stock prices, recession risk, and political uncertainty cloud the outlook for equities.

Central banks believe that economies tend towards equilibrium. But Professor Steve Keen thinks differently. He argues that central bank models fail to capture the complexity of modern economies while faulty climate change models threaten the capitalist system...

What went wrong with capitalism? According to Ruchir Sharma, progressives are right, in part, when they mock modern capitalism as "socialism for the rich."

This Research Spotlight focuses on the Brandywine Global Opportunistic Equity strategy, a benchmark unaware true value global equity strategy that has produced very strong alpha.

With armed conflicts raging in Europe and Middle East, and the prospect of a US-China showdown over Taiwan, many investors believe World War III is increasingly likely. But the Forum's Visiting Fellow, Pippa Malmgren, thinks differently.

Powerful geopolitical, demographic, environmental, technological and sociological trends are reshaping our world, impacting investment risk and uncertainty and how best to design portfolios capable of improving the financial well-being of individuals.

Investors need to challenge conventional wisdom around investment style, process and active share and focus on durable sources of alpha that will improve total portfolio returns.

With a more benign outlook for interest rates conditions, there is an opportunity to capitalise on the innate earnings power of infrastructure assets.

An Alternative Risk Premia (ARP) approach to investing, rooted in academic research, can deliver more stable and resilient performance even in volatile market conditions.

Within emerging market economies, there are many companies that have developed to challenge the world's best businesses. Valuations are attractive and do not reflect the underlying value of the business.

Did you ever wonder why so many pundits got their Australian house price forecasts so wrong? Real estate pricing is not driven by interest rates, population growth, or tax regimes.

The market growth and quality of private market alternatives provides investors an opportunity to meaningfully enhance 60/40 with higher returns and less volatility.

Higher rates and structural changes, such as tighter regulation, are reshaping both public and private debt markets, requiring investors to take a multi-sector and relative value approach across both.

The breadth and depth of private markets increased significantly in recent years and practitioners can no longer ignore unlisted assets when building multi-asset portfolios.

When it comes to investing in public equities, it's easy to get deterred by media headlines but it's vital to remember that stocks are not the economy.

In a higher interest rate regime, with a higher correlation between stocks and bonds, replacing public equities with private market investments makes sense.

Private Equity pooled returns have been attractive while also less volatile than investing in a single fund or fund-of-funds. Enabling investors to "buy the private market" would complement portfolios just like in public markets.

It is essential that portfolios are exposed to different, uncorrelated alternative risk factors and capture a variety of available risk premia to maximise risk-adjusted returns.

Traditional stocks and bonds have long been the mainstay of investment portfolios. However, the breadth and depth of private markets increased significantly in recent years and practitioners can no longer ignore unlisted assets. When held alongside publicly traded equities and bonds, private equity, private debt and real asset strategies may bring significant benefits to multi-asset portfolios, providing access to unique investment opportunities.

Wealth management is in a post-product, post-service stage of development – it is now a design industry. In a highly competitive marketplace, where products are widely and cheaply available, offering a differentiated experience means delivering best-of-strategies solutions for specific client needs. This session explores key challenges and opportunities in multi-asset, multi-manager portfolio construction that practitioners should be thinking about, given the whole is greater than the sum of its parts!

The widespread adoption of managed account solutions has shown a seismic shift in most investment advisers believing it is too risky to entrust just one active investment manager with building a diversified portfolio for clients.

With the body of human knowledge doubling in size every year, investors are drowning in data. Yet the emergence of artificial intelligence will increasingly help us manage the problem of cognitive overload. Indeed, such technologies are bringing about a new era, in which the logical and emotional hemispheres of the human brain are knitted back together, enabling a more holistic understanding of the world. The emergence of this superhuman consciousness will profoundly change how people think about the nature of reality – in finance, and more generally – revolutionising the way we manage risk and uncertainty.

The things that make people, people, are also the things that bind our portfolio construction methods together. Investment philosophies, beliefs and biases impact how we implement our technical skills by adjusting not only the angle of our enquiries but also how we interpret our results. As highly trained investment managers and advisers, we are impacted not only by our biases in behaviour, but also by the biases we hold that we’re not even aware we hold.

We humans by nature deal with much of our lives and memories in stories and story-like forms, to be dipped into for comfort and provide explanations. To excel academically and professionally, we need to think taxonomically, organising information in a structured hierarchy. But while these taxonomic processes help us early in our careers, they can also limit our perspective, making our thinking predictable and replicable by AI. To gain deeper insights, critical to long-term investing, we must adapt by integrating finance with other disciplines such as economics, accounting, finance, sociology, anthropology, psychology, sustainability, political science and philosophy. Adopting a holistic perspective can greatly improve problem-solving, bringing valuable benefits to our clients’ portfolios.

Our diverse panel of asset class experts discussed and clarified the implications of four economic scenarios for the medium-term (three-year) outlook for key asset classes, and then the Investment Committee (Summit delegates) voted to determine probabilities for each of the scenarios as inputs to the Asset Allocation Roundtable.

The inputs from the Asset Class Outlook Roundtable determine a headline Dynamic Asset Allocation (DAA) Growth/Defensive split for the coming 12 months, based on the 60/40 Neutral Asset Allocation (NAA). diverse panel of asset allocation experts discusses and debates key asset allocation and implementation decisions with reference to the NAA and within the context of the headline DAA Growth/Defensive split. The Investment Committee (Summit delegates) votes as the asset class decisions are being debated. Once finalised, the Investment Committee’s views (as expressed by the voting) then determine the DAA for the hypothetical portfolio for the coming 12 months.

Our diverse panel of experts identified their key takeouts from Strategies Summit 2024 and the portfolio construction implications.

The free world faces two related threats. First, the likelihood of World War III is rapidly rising. Second, the creation of a coalition of law-abiding nations appears less likely. And investors anticipating significant interest rate cuts face disappointment.

This lecture instructs IMAC candidates on the diversification benefits and limitations of a multi-asset, multi-manager approach to portfolio construction.

This lecture instructs IMAC candidates on the fundamentals of client discovery and formulating an Investment Policy Statement in the investment consulting context.

Many Australians view the rise of western "populism" as irrational. But former Australian politician and immediate past Ambassador to the US, Arthur Sinodinos, thinks differently.

This lecture instructs IMAC candidates on the process for the design of a strategic investment plan for a portfolio to meet client goals, that applies equally to a small retail client or a very large institutional client.

This lecture instructs IMAC candidates on the use of returns-based multi-factor analysis to better understand the underlying drivers of a managed fund's return and risk over its life.

With Australian insolvencies at a 25-year high and corporate debt defaults rising globally, many investors are hoping that central banks will significantly reduce interest rates. But Coolabah Capital's Chris Joye thinks differently.

This lecture instructs IMAC candidates on the characteristics and use of alternative assets in multi-asset portfolios.

Equity investors should set aside their fears of a second Trump presidency and focus instead on the structural opportunities presented by decarbonisation.

The Investment Management Analyst Certificate (IMAC) advances investment management analyst knowledge, skill and expertise in a definitive set of competencies necessary for building and/or advising on quality multi-manager portfolios. It is both a structured post-graduate certificate course in its own right, and the Australian-based Registered Education Program for the global Certified Investment Management Analyst® (CIMA®) program.

Our Markets Summit program kicks off with a video retrospective of the key events of the prior year...

There's much to learn from history, but every time is different when it comes to markets. The backdrop for investing will require investors to identify how the outlook today intersects with our experiences of the past and where it differs.

This economic cycle will mean revert to a traditional business cycle - a cycle that may not exactly repeat but will rhyme with prior inflation cycles. Opportunities exist in global bonds in 2024 and 2025 no matter hard or soft landing outcomes.

Second term presidents tend to be more ideologically aggressive, since they are freed from the need to face voters again. Investors globally need to think through the implications of a second term for either candidate.

While investors need to be mindful of the potential risks posed by different stress events, they should largely ignore macro and geopolitical predictions when it comes to selecting companies to invest in. The discussion covered a range of investment topics, from inflation predictions to niche equity opportunities in mid-cap and emerging markets

Equity valuations are at attractive levels for most emerging markets but the lack of interest in emerging markets in general has led to extraordinarily attractive valuations.

Despite outpacing traditional fixed income and even exceeding long-run equity returns, some commentators argue that Private Credit represents emerging systemic risk. That is a fundamental misunderstanding.

Investors should explore opportunities beyond the ASX20, focusing instead on the Ex-20 index which provides exposure to Australia's future rather than its past.

Three investment experts offer and debate their high conviction thesis on a long-term, deep rooted structural change impacting markets over a decade or more.

There's no such thing as "normal" for supply chains. The challenges for 2024 and 2025 that echo the past include logistics network disruptions, geopolitical risks and the cash costs of environmental policies - which make investing in supply chain security more important than ever.

Global REITs have been overwhelmed by the rapid rise in interest rates, headlines about the demise of the office, and concerns over bank lending to commercial real estate. However, history is not repeating. The industry is in strong shape.

Market cycles show there is a clear anomaly in the Senior Secured Loans space with record setting yields and compelling risk-adjusted returns.

History shows investors should always expect the unexpected – which simply underscores the benefits of adding private debt to a portfolio.

For the last two decades, private equity has consistently outperformed the public market, through market cycles and with less volatility. In 2023, private equity continued to show superior returns in the mid-market. Looking forward, the outlook for is stronger.

Australia's residential vacancy rate is at a record low and net overseas migration at a record high. But, the banks can no longer participate in the market like they used to, providing greater opportunity for real estate private credit.

Higher than desired inflation is now structurally embedded in the global economy. The boom-bust inflation cycle of the 1970s gives a useful historical parallel, providing investors insight into the coming decade.

The technology sector has now eclipsed its all-time high relative to the S&P 500, exceeding its dot.com bubble highs. So this begs the question – is this a bubble and what is the risk of another tech wreck?

With heightened global geopolitical risks, reduced fiscal support from governments, a deflating Chinese property bubble, and an ongoing US commercial real estate crisis, 2024 is a year for investors to be nimble and tactical.

Our diverse panel of experts debated the high conviction propositions they heard during Markets Summit 2024 and the portfolio construction implications.

We are in an investment environment like that of the pre-GFC period. Bonds will offer higher levels of both income and diversification, within a multi-asset portfolio.

Much of current economic and markets thinking is rooted in the post-GFC era. Practitioners need to let go of that history and embrace the fact that four trends are fundamentally changing the long-term outlook for markets.

Contrary to wide opinion, globalisation is not "history" but is being reinvented. For investors, a less interconnected world has significant implications for corporate capital expenditure and country allocation.

What a difference a year makes. In February 2023, investors were preoccupied by the risks of rising inflation, monetary tightening and recession. This year, the focus is on disinflation, monetary easing and economic growth.