What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
The Western-led global economic order has had a bad 2023. Surprisingly, the primary cause was not the emergence of an alternative order led by China, as some had anticipated.
The December 2023 farrelly's Dynamic Asset Allocation update is now available on the farrelly's subscriber area on Portfolio Construction Forum.
The December 2023 farrelly's Dynamic Asset Allocation update is now available on the farrelly's subscriber area on Portfolio Construction Forum.
On the Hunt is a monthly lecture series focused on the human factors in investment portfolio construction, including the ethical implications. It will help you better identify and understand how investing biases, beliefs and behaviours impact portfolio construction practices - and therefore, investment outcomes - to help you build better quality investor portfolios.
Different ways of presenting an identical set of data lead to very different insights into a fund’s performance. Using an arithmetic graph is by far the easiest to understand - and it can also be the most deceptive.
At this year's FAAA Congress, we asked an expert panel about the implications of a VUCA investment climate for the construction of multi-asset, multi-manager portfolios and for investment conversations with clients.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
This paper provides a penetrating view into some of the motivational dynamics in play for individual investors who select sustainability-related investments, and implications for financial intermediaries who manufacture and sell such products.
It is past time to revisit the widely prevailing "free lunch" view of government debt. With a few notable exceptions, those who championed the notion have not acknowledged the likelihood of a new reality.
In the wake of the most rapid and material rise in global interest rates for 50 years, we could be forgiven for scratching our heads at what has happened over 2023. Has monetary policy lost its mojo? Or has 2023 been a "head fake"?
This report summarises the key observations from ASIC's review of how issuers of investment products are meeting design and distribution obligations and areas for improvement.
Highlight our upcoming live CE programs, and all of the complimentary on-demand CE-accredited resources published over recent months.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
This lecture argues that client behaviour profiling should be a critical first step of the financial advice process. It examines why ethical client profiling - leveraging off psychology, behavioural finance, ethics, and the financial advice process - is necessary to successfully deliver consistent positive client outcomes. NOTE: This lecture is available for purchase - go to https://portfolioconstructionforum.edu.au/on-the-hunt/
Hamas's barbaric massacre of Israelis on 7 October and Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza to eradicate the group, has introduced four geopolitical scenarios bearing on the global economy and markets.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
When seeking exposure to the energy transition, investors typically think of wind and solar farms, and hydrogen and battery production. But the best risk/reward energy transition opportunities can be found elsewhere.
As finance ministers and central bankers convened in Marrakesh for the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in mid October, what surprised veteran analysts the most was the expected calamity that hasn't happened - an emerging-market debt crisis.
When just about every asset price trends upwards, and episodic falls in market prices are quickly reversed, risk management is unrewarded. But the world has changed and portfolio risk management is now critical.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Even in the highly unlikely event that the current geopolitical situation improves rapidly, a deep sense of uncertainty will remain, driven by five economic and financial factors.
The WallStreetBets phenomenon - and the sensational short squeeze of Gamestop in 2021 in particular - demonstrated the potentially dramatic influence of collective retail behaviour on financial markets.
Those calling for the cash rate to be raised to a more appropriate "real" level or to match the Fed Funds rate to avoid "imported inflation" should be duly ignored.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Could Japan become the world's next great growth story? Warren Buffett seems to think so and the IMF expects the Japanese economy to grow by 1.4% in 2023. But the Japanese economy could also be a ticking time bomb.
Focussing on what we know about the world we live in and figuring out what it might mean for investing is much less glamourous and newsworthy than the prediction game, but it's potentially more rewarding.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
There is good reason to think that the economic orthodoxy of the past 50 years has one foot in the grave. The question is whether the mainstream economics profession has gotten the memo.
The three biggest crashes in US stock markets occurred in October and there have been other significant October falls over the past 100 years. While common sense suggests the "October Effect" is nothing more than market folklore, should it be ignored?
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Whether the dollar retains its global role will hinge on whether the US brings its soaring debts under control, avoids another unproductive debt-ceiling showdown, and gets its economic and political act together more generally.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
The September 2023 farrelly's Dynamic Asset Allocation update is now available on the farrelly's subscriber area on Portfolio Construction Forum.
The September 2023 farrelly's Dynamic Asset Allocation update is now available on the farrelly's subscriber area on Portfolio Construction Forum.
Owning or not owning 4% of the global equity market is not going to make or break any portfolio. As for being too big to ignore? It's nuts and you can clearly see it's nuts.
The distinction between free trade and protectionism not only misrepresents recent history, it also misconstrues today's policy transitions and the conditions needed for a healthy global economy.
August 1982 was a banner month. It saw the dawn of a new regime for investors – and for record labels – that was to run for 40 years. But in 2022, cash rates finally ended their 40-year decline. And the world turned for investors.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Now that the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) will accept new members, can the grouping pose a genuine challenge to the prevailing global-governance institutions?
Three gigantic, global, interconnected risks have the potential to upend the world as we know it. Investors who understand these will be better positioned to successfully navigate the uncertainty plaguing our world.
In the same way that Moneyball has swept every professional sport, data science is bringing greater transparency to portfolio managers' decision-making skill. To select managers capable of outperforming, behavioural analysis is crucial.
Opinions about private markets are often not rooted in facts, due in part to the fact that data on private markets has been scarce. But data is available and it debunks some of the common misconceptions about private markets.
The primary criticism directed at those who think about the future is that it's an act of futility. But thinking about how the future may unfold has proven to be a useful way to make decisions amidst radical uncertainty.
Since central banks abandoned their ultra-loose monetary policies, currencies once again offer a source of investment returns, as well as portfolio diversification.
For the first two decades of their life, hedged funds produced outstanding returns on average. For the past 20 years, it's not been so good. In this Spotlight, we review the reasons why, and whether there are any hedge funds worthy of inclusion in portfolios.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Advice Engagement is a framework that helps advisers focus on understanding their clients' needs and improving their outcomes, by improving the likelihood that the client will accept and follow the advice.
While the US dollar's share of global foreign exchange reserves is in long-term decline, the currency's dominance will continue despite the rising risk of embedded inflation.
While a severe hurricane for the global economy looks less likely than it did a few months ago, we are still likely to encounter a tropical storm that could cause significant economic and financial damage.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Until the early 1950s, investing was an art. Then, along came the publication of work undertaken by Harry Markowitz (1952). Over a 20-year period, this played the primary role in moving investing from an art to a science.
The authors of this paper propose that it's not just confirmation bias, but the way it interacts with a specific set of fundamental beliefs that generates a surprisingly wide array of bias effects.
The bulk of the research on sustainable investing has concentrated on returns. These two papers look beyond that to whether investors are so committed to sustainability that they will continue to invest irrespective of returns or fees.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Highlight our upcoming live CE programs, and all of the complimentary on-demand CE-accredited resources published over recent months.
In recent decades, the world's wealth soared as low interest rates drove up asset prices. But the global balance sheet is rife with fragilities. How the world borrows, lends, and creates wealth may change fundamentally.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Gold has fascinated investors and analysts for decades. But it is a poor hedge against inflation over meaningful time horizons, and it is close to its highest real price in 800 years.
Industry funds don't use up to date valuations on their unlisted assets, and this is effectively cheating on their performance reporting? That's nuts and you can clearly see it's nuts.
Over the past 15 years, as behavioural sciences gained widespread recognition, economics has progressively acknowledged the significance of the biases that drive individuals and firms to behave irrationally.
The June 2023 farrelly's Dynamic Asset Allocation update is now available on the farrelly's subscriber area on Portfolio Construction Forum.
farrelly's Investment Strategy provides subscription and consulting tools and services to enable a dynamic, forward-looking approach to asset allocation, a key driver of quality portfolio construction and quality results for investors...
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
The arguments for and against active and passive management are much more nuanced than is often suggested by proponents on either side. In this Spotlight, we review the hard facts as represented by the S&P Index Versus Active (SPIVA) data, which farrelly’s views as the definitive database on active management.
The G7 countries may have set out to deter China without escalating the new cold war, but the perception in Beijing suggests that they failed.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
The most recent evolution in index investing has been a drift into the active world. Until recently, active passive investing has not been subject to much analysis. The two papers considered here begin to make some inroads.
We should never let rules of thumb override financial fundamentals, but there are times when fundamentals become quite hazy. Recent inflation data suggests that we are in such a period right now.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Throughout history, technological change has created both winners and losers. There is no reason why AI, like previous technologies, shouldn't produce more of the former than the latter.
Only buy High Yield Debt when it is super cheap? It's nuts and you can clearly see it's nuts.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Fragmentation and decoupling are becoming the new normal - US and China remain on a collision course, and a dangerous deepening of the ongoing "geopolitical depression" is all but inevitable.
Decision attribution analysis provides a crucial lens on equity manager skill, benefiting asset owners and fund buyers as they select and monitor managers.
We can help retirees build and retain their sense of control by keeping on building trust and educating them, modelling possible outcomes and showing a planned approach – including providing a Plan B.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
In a wide-ranging speech last week, Janel Yellen reversed the terms of US engagement with China, prioritising national-security concerns over economic considerations.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Until the BRICS countries can find a credible alternative for their own savings, the greenback's dominance will not really be in doubt.
The basic principle of duration risk seems to have been lost on many bankers, fixed-income investors, and bank regulators. After being a non-factor for the last 15 years, the interest-rate sensitivity of deposits has returned to the fore.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
This Research Roundtable focused on the Ruffer Total Return International (Australia) strategy, with senior practitioners deciding, after briefings, Q&A and debate, their individual rating for the strategy and whether to include it on a hypothetical APL and/or multi-manager portfolios. Afterwards, the meeting is truncated and published for on-demand viewing by all Forum members.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Speculation that the world is deglobalising misses the mark - global integration is evolving, not retreating, in the digital era. Our world has changed.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
India is poised to become the world's most important country in the medium term. Yet the model that has driven India's growth now threatens to constrain it.
The March 2023 farrelly's Dynamic Asset Allocation update is now available on the farrelly's subscriber area on Portfolio Construction Forum.
The March 2023 farrelly's Dynamic Asset Allocation update is now available on the farrelly's subscriber area on Portfolio Construction Forum.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
America, China, and Russia are collectively sleepwalking down a path of conflict escalation, carrying high-octane fuel that could be ignited all too easily. Just like 1914.
Established in 2009, Markets Summit is THE investment markets scene setter of the year, focusing on the key drivers and outlook for the markets. As usual, 2023 Faculty were each challenged to offer their best high conviction proposition in the context of the program theme - this year, "Every VUCA cloud has a silver lining!" Their high-conviction faculty propositions can be distilled into three key discussion threads, supporting the case that, for portfolios, every VUCA cloud has a silver lining! Watch the highlights video, read the key takeouts - and then delve into the high conviction presentations that most interest you.
There was plenty of food for thought and grist for the investment portfolio mill, coming out of the recent Markets Summit 2023 "Every VUCA cloud has a silver lining!".
The concept of "transitory inflation" is making a comeback. Looking ahead to the rest of the year and early 2024, three inflation scenarios stand out for me.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Many who attended this year's World Economic Forum in Davos were struck by the jubilant mood of the CEOs in attendance. It was hard to reconcile this optimism economic uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine.
This lecture argues that a diversified portfolio of core fixed income securities is an essential component of an optimal multi-asset portfolio. What's your philosophy?
This lecture explores the concept of ethics, contemporary issues in financial services as they relate to ethics, and the relevancy and application of ethics in our everyday lives.
Value investing has proven successful over time but it requires discipline and a long-run horizon - and disagreement remains over whether the value premium will persist. What's your philosophy?
This Spotlight finds that High Yield Debt can be a very useful addition to most investors' portfolios, producing returns that are close to those of Equities, but with lower risk. Read the full report.
This Spotlight highlights that High Yield Debt can be a very useful addition to most investors' portfolios, producing returns that are close to those of Equities, but with lower risk. Read the abridged report.
What's new with our live and on-demand continuing education, accreditation and certification programs.
Uncertainty and change are unavoidable realities of life. In the spirit of thinking differently and embracing uncertainty, I offer you this year's global developments to watch over the next five years.