It is essential that portfolios are exposed to different, uncorrelated alternative risk factors and capture a variety of available risk premia to maximise risk-adjusted returns.

Traditional stocks and bonds have long been the mainstay of investment portfolios. However, the breadth and depth of private markets increased significantly in recent years and practitioners can no longer ignore unlisted assets. When held alongside publicly traded equities and bonds, private equity, private debt and real asset strategies may bring significant benefits to multi-asset portfolios, providing access to unique investment opportunities.

Wealth management is in a post-product, post-service stage of development – it is now a design industry. In a highly competitive marketplace, where products are widely and cheaply available, offering a differentiated experience means delivering best-of-strategies solutions for specific client needs. This session explores key challenges and opportunities in multi-asset, multi-manager portfolio construction that practitioners should be thinking about, given the whole is greater than the sum of its parts!

The multi-asset, multi-manager approach to investing is fundamentally about diversification to control risk including volatility, but also the risk that's most important to clients which is the risk of not meeting the end objective.

The widespread adoption of managed account solutions has shown a seismic shift in most investment advisers believing it is too risky to entrust just one active investment manager with building a diversified portfolio for clients.

Traditional asset allocation is insufficient for addressing investors' real-world needs. A more dynamic approach to portfolio construction is needed, incorporating risk factor diversification to account for tail risks, and objectives-based investing.

With the body of human knowledge doubling in size every year, investors are drowning in data. Yet the emergence of artificial intelligence will increasingly help us manage the problem of cognitive overload. Indeed, such technologies are bringing about a new era, in which the logical and emotional hemispheres of the human brain are knitted back together, enabling a more holistic understanding of the world. The emergence of this superhuman consciousness will profoundly change how people think about the nature of reality – in finance, and more generally – revolutionising the way we manage risk and uncertainty.

The things that make people, people, are also the things that bind our portfolio construction methods together. We are impacted not only by our biases in behaviour, but also by the biases we hold that we're not even aware we hold.

To gain deeper insights, critical to long-term investing, we must adapt by integrating finance with other disciplines. Adopting a holistic perspective can greatly improve problem-solving, bringing valuable benefits to our clients' portfolios.

Our diverse panel of asset class experts discussed and clarified the implications of four economic scenarios for the medium-term (three-year) outlook for key asset classes, and then the Investment Committee (Summit delegates) voted to determine probabilities for each of the scenarios as inputs to the Asset Allocation Roundtable.

Picking up on the inputs from the Asset Class Outlook Roundtable and the Investment Committee's views (as expressed by delegates' votes), our asset allocation panel debated the key asset allocation and implementation decisions for the hypothetical portfolio for the coming 12 months.

Our diverse panel of experts identified their key takeouts from Strategies Summit 2024 and the portfolio construction implications.

The free world faces two related threats. First, the likelihood of World War III is rapidly rising. Second, the creation of a coalition of law-abiding nations appears less likely. And investors anticipating significant interest rate cuts face disappointment.

This lecture instructs IMAC candidates on the diversification benefits and limitations of a multi-asset, multi-manager approach to portfolio construction.

This lecture instructs IMAC candidates on the fundamentals of client discovery and formulating an Investment Policy Statement in the investment consulting context.

Many Australians view the rise of western "populism" as irrational. But former Australian politician and immediate past Ambassador to the US, Arthur Sinodinos, thinks differently.

This lecture instructs IMAC candidates on the process for the design of a strategic investment plan for a portfolio to meet client goals, that applies equally to a small retail client or a very large institutional client.

This lecture instructs IMAC candidates on the use of returns-based multi-factor analysis to better understand the underlying drivers of a managed fund's return and risk over its life.

With Australian insolvencies at a 25-year high and corporate debt defaults rising globally, many investors are hoping that central banks will significantly reduce interest rates. But Coolabah Capital's Chris Joye thinks differently.