This week's Fodder is a special feature focused on the presentation given by internationally renowned economic and financial historian, Professor Niall Ferguson, at our recent PortfolioConstruction Forum Symposium 2016 program.

Symposium facilitates featured a stellar line up of 20 international and local experts - including special guest keynote, Professor Niall Ferguson, PhD, internationally renowned economic and financial historian - offering their expert, high conviction ideas to help build better quality investor portfolios.

Presented in a format that incorporates a game, this workshop explored the risk factors that drive retirement portfolio outcomes.

Central bankers successfully tamed inflation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Persistently low inflation is the new problem. With markets complacent about the inflation outlook, signs of inflation could create a scare.

With a growing number of central banks resorting to negative interest rates and the IMF acknowledging the risk of secular stagnation, investors could be forgiven for feeling nervous. Yet there is some evidence that the global economy may be at an inflection point.

With a growing number of central banks resorting to negative interest rates and the IMF acknowledging the risk of secular stagnation, investors could be forgiven for feeling nervous. Yet there is some evidence that the global economy may be at an inflection point.

Nearly every investor is confronting the challenge of how to invest in a low growth, low return environment. Investors must rethink portfolio construction.

The extreme thirst for yield has pushed the US high yield debt cycle into unchartered territory. It is approaching shakeout - with long/short opportunities amongst the beneficiaries of the current cycle.

China's credit-fuelled investment growth phase is reaching its end game and new sources of growth are needed to drive the economy.

Markets are focused on the economic cycle as an indicator of central bank actions. But inflation should be the most important macro indicator on the radar of investors.

More than ever, investors need to filter out the noise and consider the geo-political developments which are shaping the world.

Most economists continue to view the economic future as more rosy (if their forecasts of economic acceleration are any guide) while the Fed is implicitly saying the same by raising rates and forecasting further rate rises. But there are three main reasons caution.

Australia is increasingly resorting to "debt bubble economics" - exactly what caused bubbles and major busts in the US and other economies in recent decades.

Monte Carlo analysis is the most common tool used to project portfolio values - yet it has an optimistic bias that sizeably underestimate required retirement savings.

In Fodder this week - Niall Ferguson, Dominic McCormick, Olivia Engel, James Lear, and Alex Wolf's Markets Summit presentation.

In Fodder this week - Niall Ferguson, Dominic McCormick, Olivia Engel, James Lear, and Alex Wolf's Markets Summit presentation.

Registration at the PortfolioConstruction Forum Program is subject to the following terms and conditions...

Fodder leads with Professor Niall Ferguson, reflecting on the lessons history provides for those supporting "Brexit". Plus more from Marko Papic, Wade Pfau, Bob Gay, & Rob Mead.

Fodder leads with Professor Niall Ferguson, reflecting on the lessons history provides for those supporting "Brexit". Plus more from Marko Papic, Wade Pfau, Bob Gay, & Rob Mead.

The lesson of history is that British isolationism is a trigger for continental disintegration. A vote for Brexit will mean Britain will have to "Breturn" sooner or later, to sort out the ensuing mess.