The 5th Annual PortfolioConstruction Conference featured a core, independent 13-hour plenary program over the two days, designed by the PortfolioConstruction Forum's specialist, experienced and independent team. As always, we selected our plenary speakers based solely on their portfolio expertise (not the size of their wallets! None of our plenary speakers paid to speak)...

Index investing has served investors well but Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel thinks it can be made even better. He proposes replacing the standard market capitalisation index with a "fundamental" index. However, not everyone agrees that this "new paradigm" will work...

The last six weeks, the markets have been something of a rollercoaster ride. Because the farrelly’s forecast methodology changes as markets go up and down, so too have the forecasts been jumping up and down. Now, it goes without saying that the last thing that you want to be doing is using a strategy that flip flops from one extreme to another in the space of a few weeks. So what do we do? Difficult or not, strategies are still required...

Since the start of the Aussie stock market fall of recent weeks, the question being promoted in the popular media is whether or not this represents a signal to sell stocks. It's refreshing then to see yesterday's report from broker Bell Potter that analyses the latest market downturn in the context of the last 25 years and concludes that this fall is typical of those that follow US Fed Reserve interest rate hikes and that, given the surrounding signs of economic strength, now may even be a time to buy Aussie stocks!

What does it take for a hedge fund to be of "institutional quality"? A paper published in the Journal of Portfolio Management, Frederick Dopfel, a senior strategist for Barclays Global Investors, provides some suggestions...

Following on from the successful offerings of Nexus 1, 2 and 3 by Deutsche Bank, Nexus 4 - the first foray into a managed CDO by Nexus - has recently announced that it has suffered an event of default in its income portfolio...

Continuing his spate of speeches on important subjects, US Fed Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke has delivered one of the most influential statements about US housing – and the US economy - in recent times...

Commissions for agribusiness projects are too high and may be damaging to the long term interests of the industry, according to the Australian Agribusiness Group’s managing director Marcus Elgin...

The yield spreads on corporate debt relative to government debt around the world have been narrowing mostly over the past two years. Several factors have driven this...

To date, most CDOs issued in Australia have given exposure to underlying credits that are rated above investment grade. Sometimes a small component of selected names which are just below investment grade are included. This will increasingly come under pressure in the search for yield...