Australian investors can get better returns and increase the transparency of the companies they invest in, by including unlisted equity in portfolios.

Traditional unit trust structures can be disadvantageous to clients seeking higher income. New options better manage this from both an investment and structure perspective.

To fill the income void, investors need not look much further than Australia's liquid and ever-growing bond market which, unlike the majority of the developed world, still offers positive real rates.

Exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum, Nobel laureate Robert Merton discusses moving to an income goal for the retirement phase of an investor's lifecycle.

Lifecycle investing differs from more traditional approaches to financial planning in a number of important ways - but it is not without its challenges.

Recorded exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum Conference, Larry Fink argues that if we don't address the challenges of increasing longevity, it will be an expensive blessing.

Recorded exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum, Sonal Desai argues it's vital to distinguish between sources of negative bond returns.

Recorded exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum, Alan Brown argues that what really matters to people is money-weighted rates of return.

Like people, economies and markets have lifecycles. This global macro economic, geopolitical and market scene setter looks at where we are in the macro lifecycle and implications for portfolios.

Better quality portfolio construction must take a whole of life focus, considering accumulation and decumulation as equally important phases of one continuous process.

There will be a significant focus by investors in the future to address the mismatch between their risk profile and the risk level of their portfolios.

Contrarian investment ideas are hard to find. After a 20-year bear market and with the Nikkei still 60% below its 1989 high, Japanese equities are an attractive contrarian investment.

This paper examines the empirical relation between risk and return in emerging equity markets and finds that this relation is flat, or even negative.

Looking beyond the immediate risk of Fonterra's product safety issues, over the medium-term, we continue to see sufficient global and domestic economic momentum to support higher bond yields.

In an ideal world, clients would immediately implement the advice they're given. The real world is very different, of course. The growing body of behavioral finance and psychology research can help.

In this bigger picture stuff, I think you'll find some valuable seeds to help you think about - and change or reconfirm - your practice's current approach to investment.

There are valuable lessons in this paper by an adviser who embraced the lifecycle investing approach.

Australia faces big economic challenges - meaning superannuation will inevitably feel pressure for reform which will encompass four key changes.

Increasing FUM brings the risk of detrimental effects on performance, some obvious, others less so.

Defining failure of a retirement investment strategy as the chance of running out of money in retirement leads us to try to minimise this risk. Is it the right approach?