Rapid technological innovation, affordable communication, and demographic shifts are reshaping the world. The traditional country/regional approach to asset allocation is not optimal for capturing these new opportunities.

Data overfitting is a well known problem and one would expect clever statisticians and scientists not to succumb to its temptations. But "meta-overfitting" may be endemic in finance.

Rather than adopting a set-and-forget approach, long-term investors should be engaged asset owners and take a broader perspective on risk, in order to achieve sustainable investment returns.

A new breed of companies – creative, nimble and networked – offer a powerful investment opportunity. Investors need to consider diversifying domestic exposures to access this set of long-term opportunities.

Amongst fundamental managers, it is critical to distinction those that are genuinely active and achieve high active share and tracking error through generating idiosyncratic returns.

Critics charge that liquid alternative funds may not provide exposure to quality hedge fund managers and exhibit lower performance potential. This paper examines those concerns.

Maintaining a solid level of income for the retiree must remain at the forefront of thinking and a move up the risk spectrum into equities provides a solution.

As the Australian bond market grows and sub-sectors emerge, investor must ask – is my defensive allocation true-to-label?

The infrastructure asset class, when defined in a disciplined manner, generates reliable earnings - and for the foreseeable future, earnings of infrastructure assets should continue to be reliable.

Despite interest rates being at historic lows, there are thousands of dividend income opportunities amongst global companies that can provide income for a desirable retirement lifestyle.

A range of cognitive biases leads investors to generally overestimate their skill. A long-term investment strategy simply compounds this problem. A long-short investment structure can improve outcomes.

Investors are increasingly short term in their orientation. An arbitrage opportunity exists for managers with a longer investment horizon.

Tracking error constraints on active management focus on short-term outcomes and don't align with most investor goals, which are longer term. A low tracking error portfolio can often lead to an unfavourable outcome for end investors.

The listed infrastructure market provides investors with a broad, deep and liquid range of infrastructure investment opportunities.

A satellite allocation to global small caps can increase portfolio efficiency over the long term.

Change is pervasive, whether at macro, sector or stock level. This argues for an approach that does not favour any particular investment style.

SMSF portfolios appear inefficient – creating an opportunity to either increase returns for the current level of risk or reduce risk for the existing return.

Managing the fundamental friction between short-term and long-term investing imperatives is a key challenge when building portfolios. This Backgrounder explores some of the key concepts and debates.

In portfolios with international exposure, there are times when currency returns dominate overall performance. This paper analyses the currency hedge decision from the perspective of an Australian investor with international exposure.

Bond market Cassandras proclaim the formation of a supernova, warning of the investment perils. It's time to spurn this talk, and stick with the core, defensive anchor provided by global fixed income.