A fundamental-based approach to equity index investing can be a powerful way to reduce risk and improve performance over the investment lifecycle.

Top performing shares often display a high ROE, while poor performing shares display the reverse - making ROE a superior valuation input to PE ratios.

Australians have sought offshore diversification for years. The logical extension is to think more deeply about how to make offshore exposures complement local ones.

Agricultural equities is the 'third leg' of the global natural resources sector, joining energy and mining.

Real return funds with their more dynamic and go-anywhere structures are designed to be able to navigate through difficult and normal times. Can they really deliver?

If you're making investments you can't sell for 10 years, how do you go about selecting them? What lessons can be learned from history?

Simplifications taken in building Australian equity strategies may result in a portfolio that doesn't achieve what it's been designed to do, particularly in relation to income and volatility.

Allocating to countries with net wealth rather than net debt can lead to superior portfolio outcomes.

Under the lifecycle investing approach, real return outcomes are the most crucial measure of investment outcomes. But managing real return risk involves thinking differently about what risk really means in portfolios.

The first argument for investing in emerging markets is that's where the growth is. That said, high economic growth does not necessarily imply high stock returns.

China needs to embrace a stronger RMB - can it become the EM's Duetsche Mark - while Japan has embarked on a structurally weak yen, with profound implications for the rest of the world.

Reforms undertaken after the 1997 crisis drive the economic resilience of South East Asia today. Going forward, cyclical risks exist, but the region is set to do better still.

China has a very new type of leader. It is in the sphere of domestic politics and economic policy, in particular, that the extent of Xi's power and his policy preferences are unclear. The signals have been mixed.

For most, human capital is the most important source of financial capital and consumption through life. Nurturing, managing and protecting it is of paramount importance.

The world is going through a period of demographic shift that is without parallel in history - with six investment sectors advantaged.

At a practical level, how can we manage the risk of a client not maintaining their desired standard of living in retirement because they have lived longer than expected?

Recorded exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum PIMCO's Mohammed El-Erian discusses QE, and whether Australia can continue to escape the new normal.

The rule of thumb 4% pa safe withdrawal rate has proven fairly robust in ensuring most retirees don't run out of money, but it is coming under pressure in the current environment.

Managing sequencing risk - the risk of poor or negative returns near or around retirement age when a portfolio is at its largest and most vulnerable - is a critical component of lifecycle investing.

Is the strong performance of trend-following strategies a statistical fluke of the last few decades or a more robust phenomenon over a wide range of economic conditions?