Six key factors differentiate exceptional companies from their peers. These all add up to a business that generates exceptional returns for extended periods of time.

Portfolio construction must stay relevant. While traditional country and sector allocations may have worked in the past, today's new environment requires a global and flexible approach.

There are many risks and uncertainties as retired clients face the next 20 to 40 years. The uncertainty related to the period of retirement can be allowed for, to enable retirees to have a higher living standard during their retirement years.

Managers must both develop and implement an investment process - but we seem to be determined to deny them recognition for the former and to judge their performance on the latter.

Time-based rebalancing is inefficient. Research suggests that tolerance band rebalancing strategies minimise trading and boost portfolio returns. Such threshold approaches may be used in both the portfolio accumulation and decumulation phase, and act as a pre-commitment device for clients.

Public policy matters to performance at every level. Yet modern politics faces a crisis of ideas, relevance and trust. The trick is to let markets do their work.

Culture is at the heart of competitive advantage today - this is particularly the case for investment firms where people and their judgments are the chief assets.

In a world where 0.6%pa is top quartile, winning is difficult and losing is easy. There are big gains to be made in surprising places. Even 1%pa adds up to a huge difference over time.

Advisers are increasingly eschewing active managed fund managers, and instead are supplanting themselves as tactical managers of "passive" ETF funds.

When it comes to investing across the capital structure, it all adds up, but debt and equity’s relative contributions to returns shift markedly through time.

The number of publicly listed companies in the US has roughly halved since 1996, a phenomenon which spans other regions. The trend is likely to persist, and it has significant implications for investors.

Ensuring your investment process has the flexibility to incorporate sustainability factors all adds up to improved longer term portfolio performance outcomes.

Building genuinely diversified portfolios, where every investment represents an active decision, makes for a champion team of investments.

Investing is simply deploying savings to generate returns, yet abstractions such as indices are creating unnecessary complexity. Nowhere in an effective investment process need there be any reference to the prospects for a market index.

Loss avoidance and simplicity are highly attractive to the human mind. However, uncertainty is often the source of superior returns and creativity can be a key source of alpha, delivering idiosyncratic outcomes.

In a developed world full of challenges, a consistently applied process that focuses on both the cyclical and secular outlook is something that every investor can apply.

Investors need to employ a rigorous and consistent valuation methodology, seek to minimise forecast error bounds and disregard traditional cap weighted benchmarks.

Janet Yellen says another crisis is not likely, yet signs of stress are growing and valuations are stretched. Investors need a strategy for weathering a storm, whether or not there is one on the horizon.

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that chronological (C) age is dominated by biological (B) age as a better proxy for longevity risk. Practitioners must consider both ages when building portfolios and structuring retirement spending strategies.

Game theory, econometrics and distributed computing power can reveal a client's true preferences for risk, loss, uncertainty, time and goals – with scientific precision and in terms that clients can understand.