The surprising result of a recent study is that the "conventional" view that earnings rise steadily (above inflation) throughout our careers is not accurate. Good spending habits established early on can make an astounding difference to wealth over a lifetime.

This week, Portugal's sovereign bonds traded on negative yield - flying in the face of any sensible assessment of credit risk. There seems to be little chance that the ECB's belated and oversized QE program will end gracefully. Policy blunders never do.

Divergences in global economic and policy outcomes have important implications for markets around the world. This policy divergence has directly influenced asset prices across the globe with implications for stocks, bonds and currency markets.

China now has to deal with a massive excess supply of property… This is unlikely to be “just another property cycle” in China. The bursting of China’s property bubble poses a major risk to both the country’s stability and the global economy.

If you have a DIMS license, you are required to stress test portfolios. Here are two practical approaches to stress testing, and the strengths and weaknesses of each to help you build your approach to portfolio stress testing.

Portfolio construction should focus on three risk buckets – beta, smart beta, and alpha. If not, you run the risk of creating a poorly diversified (that is, over diversified) portfolio – and, worse, a portfolio that costs far more than it should.

Each of our Symposium 2015 DDF presenters gave a 2-minute overview of their high conviction portfolio construction strategy idea.

Rather than large, liquid companies with significant global revenue bases which dominate benchmark allocations, investors should seek exposure to India’s surging local demand…

When combining managers together to form a multi-manager global equity portfolio, investors should still aim to keep active share relatively high.

uilding NZ fixed interest portfolios is harder than it has ever been… Portfolios need to be constructed for the specific needs of clients, which will typically be a combination of liquidity, income, quality, and diversification

At the coal face, engagement between company boards and institutional shareholders can achieve meaningful improvements for all investors. Perseverance and commitment are essential.

The diverse range of quality small cap companies with recurring earnings and growing dividend yields offer investors essential risk diversification and should be incorporated into portfolios.

Investors will need to hunt out alternative sources of yield to meet their investment objectives. All is not lost. Yield can be preserved in a low yield world but investors need to be aware of the risks and trade-offs.

Each panelist outlined which high conviction markets idea from Symposium 2015 day one they agreed with most, and which one they agreed with least.

What return premia - if any - are attached to different types of investment risk? And just how reliable are those premia are in practice? Can the risks be diversified?

It’s possible, or more likely probable, that for future generations, our money will run out before our body does. This means that our historical models of accumulation and decumulation will not work for future generations.

As we all brace for lift-off in the key US Federal funds rate, a robust, top-down macro perspective will be even more critical to the success of portfolios than ever.

Our Symposium 2015 debated their high conviction ideas on the drivers of, and medium-term outlook for, the New Zealand economy.

Economic growth has had a lot of bad press recently. But on closer inspection, the objections typically leveled against growth do not stand up to empirical scrutiny.

NZ has plummeted down the global income per capita rankings from third in the 1950s to 23rd in 2015. Successive governments have done little to reverse the decline. Why have we failed to regain our position?