George W. Bush allegedly once said, "the problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur." Indeed, most people have no idea what entrepreneurship really means.

A recent Australian study of how clients prefer to be communicated with from their financial advisers sheds some interesting light on the challenge.

The challenge for investors over the past several years is that diversification did not work as expected. The dynamic nature of correlation must be factored into portfolio modeling.

While most financial advisers aspire to work with HNW clients, very few successfully do so with any scale or significance. Most advisers will have a few HNW clients, but all too few of them. Why?

So the US budget deficit is contracting because government consumption is falling? It is really just an accounting illusion. Financial repression is still the order of the day.

Our Forum Fodder e-newsletter alerts Members to what's new on PortfolioConstruction.com.au and live progams.

Our Forum Fodder NZ e-newsletter alerts Members to what's new on PortfolioConstruction.com.au and live progams. In Fodder NZ this week - Tim Farrelly, Robert Shiller and Michael Edesess

In theory, recent currency devaluations should make EM countries more competitive. But they're also facing a technological jump that they may not be able to keep up with.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Polonius's advice was "Neither a borrower nor a lender be For loan oft loses both itself and friend." In contrast, borrowing and lending between strangers makes the world a better place.

When meeting with a prospect for the first time, financial advisers should limit discussion about their background to 3 minutes and address the 4 key questions most prospects want answered.

Does Fama and French's latest work, A Five-Factor Asset Pricing Model, provide any information that can be of practical value to advisers or investors? The answer is no.

When any investment and, in particular, an alternative investment begins to be considered mainstream with attendant big inflows, the end is generally nigh.

The nature of target date funds - encompassing multiple objectives and changing asset allocations over time - raises challenges for performance reporting.

The Fed's clear message from yesterday's FOMC meeting is that it will stay the course on exiting QE as gracefully and slowly as possible.

Our Forum Fodder NZ e-newsletter alerts Members to what's new on PortfolioConstruction.com.au and live progams. Fodder kicks off with a memo received overnight from Dr Robert Gay. Plus Ken Rogoff, Michael Kitces,Hamish Douglass

Our Forum Fodder e-newsletter alerts Members to what's new on PortfolioConstruction.com.au and live progams. It's a provocative Fodder this week with views from Tim Farrelly, Robert Shiller and Michael Edesess

It is through competition between wants and different ways of satisfying them, that markets create prosperity. In economic thinking, competition has two main functions.

Will each future generation continue to enjoy a better quality of life than its immediate predecessor? The likely answer is yes, but the risks seem higher.

As the logic goes, retired clients deplete their portfolios, and more pass away as the years go by, so a firm with aging clients is akin to a rapidly depreciating asset. But is this true?

It's the eternal debate - can active management outperform? Two recent reports offer some interesting insights into the issue.