For a valuation driven rally in risk markets to be sustained for anything more than a week or so, the global credit system has to revive. This six point plan could achieve that...

A usual criticism of modelling tools is the assumption that returns are normally distributed. But black swans seem to be a short-term phenomenon...

Overcoming the limitations of financial theory and the biases of its practitioners is difficult but not impossible - the financial equivalent of the Hippocratic oath may help...

The debate around active versus passive managed equity funds provoked lively discussion at last month's PortfolioConstruction Forum Symposium in Auckland. For this follow up feature, financialalert asked proponents of both approaches why they choose the strategy they do. One thing they all had in common is a strong belief in their position...

There are really only two words to discuss - Greece and Spain - and the implications for Australian cash rates, bond yields and equity markets - and, of course, portfolios.

Building debt portfolios used to be easy. But it’s much harder now. These days, the debt side of portfolios must be absolutely secure and should designed as three buckets...

Britannia launches new compliant QROPS - open to all advisers. Call to ban publication of gross returns for KiwiSaver funds. Annual declaration time for AFAs. Where your clients income tax ends up...

PortfolioConstruction Forum Symposium is a unique professional development program designed and presented specifically for NZ practitioners who focus on giving quality investment advice.

In early May 2012, 120 portfolio construction practitioners - 90% of them AFAs - gathered in Auckland for the two-day PortfolioConstruction Forum Symposium featured leading local and international investment professionals presenting on contemporary and emerging portfolio construction issues. financialalert asked delegates to send in their key takeouts from the two-day program...

This Due Diligence Forum Research Paper and Presentation examine why infrastructure assets have performed differently to other investable assets (and whether we can expect this to continue), how this performance can be linked to underlying asset characteristics, and how investors can use some of the unique attributes of infrastructure to improve portfolio returns...

This Due Diligence Forum Research Paper and Presentation argue that strategic asset allocation should be determined with a long-term horizon in mind - so the key input in the construction process is the long-term return outlook for different asset classes. To help inform that judgment, we should consider returns through three separate lenses: - what did happen, what theory says should have happened, and what the market is pricing will happen.

This Due Diligence Forum Research Paper and Presentation examine the various income options available to NZ retail investors, and look closely at the extent to which they are being appropriately rewarded for the risk posed by various income products including hybrids...

This Due Diligence Forum Research Paper and Presentation focus on how to construct multi-manager global share portfolios in a way to reduce the overall risk of the portfolio without dampening or reducing the overall expected outperformance of the underlying managers...

In this Workshop, two full-time research professionals demonstrated how they would design a portfolio for a real investor, based on a real world portfolio construction case study submitted by one of the Symposium delegates...

As with debt portfolios, many advisers are designing and building direct equity portfolios of NZ and Australian equities. In this Critical Issues Forum, our presenters had 15 minutes each to argue their case - one for using passive direct equities via ETFs when building NZ/Australian equity portfolios and the other for using active managed funds...

This Critical Issues Forum discussed the key macro-economic and geopolitical issues we cannot afford to lose sight of in constructing portfolios, before turning to the current status, key issue and outlook for global equity markets...

In the short term, we often see dramatic differences in the performance of hedged versus unhedged portfolios. This interactive Workshop debated the pros and cons of various currency hedging strategies and provided insights into what you should consider in setting your own currency management policy.

Many New Zealand advisers are designing and building debt portfolios by buying bonds direct. Our two presenters had 15 minutes each to argue their case - one for building direct debt portfolios and the other for using active managed funds.

MPT has been misapplied for the past 60 years. In this Critical Issues Forum, Michael Kitces argued that markets are not efficient, but they are adaptive - so appropriate use of MPT requires forward-looking projections. This requires more work to apply effectively, but can lead to portfolios that are more efficient and give better risk/return trade-offs.

The tectonic plates of the world economy are shifting. This Critical Issues Forum argued that Europe is not just in a financial crisis, but also a social, political and demographic decline. Will the Euro break up? Can Asia save us?