The 7th annual Portfolio Construction Forum took place in what for many professionals would be considered the eye of a financial hurricane. The news over the prior 12 months had been awful in virtually every domestic financial sector, and the world was fighting through a global credit crisis that had replaced the days of easy money and leverage with a liquidity crisis and flight to quality that threatened international returns for the next half-decade. Delegates arrived with a single mission: to deconstruct the root causes of the domestic and global meltdown, and figure out how to help their clients ride out the storm...

This presentation and underlying research paper bring together 70 years of equity market and commodity price data to help quantify the relationship, measure the extent of the risk and, in doing so, draw some inferences about how to structure a resources portfolio to take account of the market's cyclical position...

This presentation and underlying research paper examine whether there is a significant relationship between inflation and the return characteristics of an investment in commercial real estate, with an objective of clarifying whether real estate acts as an inflation hedge...

The presentation and underlying research paper answer the questions facing advisers now: What are the risks of cash and fixed income investing? Where are the opportunities in the new world of fixed income investing? How do I explain these to my clients?

This presentation and underlying research paper examine why diversification remains a key reason for including commodity assets in a portfolio, and argues that a long-short strategy that provides commodity exposure allows investors to take advantage of volatility and provides a positive absolute return for a portfolio...

This presentation and underlying research paper examine whether the philosophies of alpha and benefits of passive management can be successfully combined and argue that passive hedge fund investing - indexing - has been an ideal way of getting low cost exposure, especially to some traditionally more efficient markets...

This presentation and underlying research paper examine the case for investing in emerging market equities from the perspective of an Australian investor, arguing that emerging markets should be viewed as a relatively risky equity sub-class that justifies its position in portfolios as a source of additional returns, rather than as a diversification opportunity...

This presentation and underlying research paper illustrate that the infrastructure asset class provides a safe haven in inflationary periods...

This presentation and underlying research paper explore relative price strength screens that can be used to identify trends and determine the right time to invest, and demonstrate the significant value that has been added over time by "listening to the market" in this way...

This presentation and underlying research paper argue that portfolios should be constructed of high quality companies with strong fundamentals bought at attractive valuations, regardless of their geographical location, sector or benchmark weight...

This presentation and underlying research paper presents analysis suggesting we have entered a fourth wave of inflation and strong commodity price growth that may continue for the next 10 to 12 years and therefore investments in agriculture are becoming increasingly attractive...

This presentation and underlying research paper address which real estate asset classes will perform best over the next five to seven years and why...

This presentation and underlying research paper ask whether we should have seen the 2007/2008 credit crisis coming, and recommends a return to the evaluation of fixed interest investments on their own individual merits rather than purely as a mathematical optimisation exercise...

This presentation and underlying research paper examine whether we can continue to blindly rely on central banks to win the fight against inflation for us, or is it time that we looked at defensive asset allocation as a way to inflation proof our portfolios?

This presentation and research paper outline the broad range of alternative investments available and some issues to consider in assessing listed and unlisted vehicles, and the key portfolio construction questions posed by non-institutional investors...

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Awareness is at an all-time high for investors and managers with regard to eco investment themes. This presentation and underlying research paper aim to highlight how investors might access these themes and how they would fit into an overall investment portfolio...

This presentation and underlying research paper assess the investment opportunity in global agribusiness...

This presentation and underlying research paper highlight that the volatility of markets suggests that, at least in the short term, markets are just a conglomeration of human herd instincts. They ask "how do we build a process and philosophy to help us beat the market?". We refer to Freud and Darwin...

As investors, we can manage and limit expected losses, but it takes expertise to limit the impact of an extreme event. In credit portfolios, this extreme event is called tail risk. This session and underlying research paper examine the risks within credit portfolios and how to manage them...

This presentation and underlying research paper argue that a well constructed global equity portfolio requires the flexibility to invest in frontier and emerging markets the future of global growth...

This presentation and underlying research paper discuss how advisers can improve portfolio efficiency through the use of long/short funds...

This presentation and underlying research paper analyses the time-varying nature of correlations between fund-of-funds and traditional asset classes with a specific focus on analysing performance during crisis periods...

This presentation and underlying research examine an alternative approach using a combination of fundamental stock level research and quantitative methods to estimate ex-ante portfolio risk based on exposure to three primary characteristics...

Risk profiling is generally agreed to be an important part of the financial planning process – and, yet, it is something that generates large measures of skepticism, controversy and, from time to time, attention from the regulators. Ensuring a portfolio is within the bounds of both a client's risk tolerance and risk capacity is critical - just getting one right is not good enough...