In mid-market Australian private equity, where inefficiencies and hands-on value creation thrive, outsized returns are being captured beyond the public eye.

Understanding the drivers of and outlook for the markets is essential to multi-asset, multi-manager investing (MAMMI). However, MAMMI is full of traps. As the saying goes "It's simple, it's just not easy!".

As we progress through the Trumpification of markets, the political and information prism through which we view the world will help us mind the gap(s) between market perception and investing reality.

Our end of day session revealed delegates' views on which of the high conviction theses they'd heard through the day they intended to investigate further or implement in practice.

Our post-program Implementation Zoominar led by consulting firm, InvestSense, drew together the key takeouts from Markets Summit 2025 and the practical implications for client portfolios, turning the insights from Markets Summit 2025 into actions.

While investors considering supply chain themes face another complex year in 2025, but it would be a mistake to assume there are only risks. There are plenty of opportunities to build sustainable, competitive advantage.

As the ideas and tools popularised under the banner of "nudge theory" have gained traction in the public and private sectors so, too, have ethical concerns regarding their use. Critics have long questioned the ethics of nudging.

In a world where Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity are ever-present and ever-changing, the act of investing is about assessing probabilities and payoffs, not trying to predict what will happen.

Research over the last 50+ years has questioned the ability of active fund managers to add value consistently over time. These two papers offer new methods to improve our ability to pick future winners and losers.

History is rhyming again. With the return of President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican Congress, the baseline supply chain policies that investors will have to deal with look a lot like those applied in the 2016 to 2020 period.

Ethical blindness is one answer to the question "Why do good people do bad things?" Together, these two papers strongly reinforce the idea that ethical practice requires that we regularly hit the brakes and check our ethical blind spots.

At one extreme, the whole investment decision-making process could be turned over to AI - at the other, it can just be used in data collection. These two papers capture the challenges of integrating AI into funds management and financial advice processes.

The financial services industry has long embraced the potential of AI-based systems including robo-advice. These two papers review the psychological and relational dynamics that arise from "algorithm aversion".

Manufacturing reshoring by global multinationals is key to economic development in frontier and emerging markets. Understanding the shifting dynamics can be critical to investment decision-making at both the country and sector level.

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.

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.