When central banks are taking to extreme policies, and Donald Trump has a decent chance of being US President, we need to be prepared for anything. Gold may not be the perfect hedge, but what is?

It seems that the markets are indicating that we have entered a period in which jewels (gold) will outperform tools (stocks). Try as we may (we are no gold-bugs), we struggle to find reasons to discard the market's message.

For all its ups and down, 2015 ended up being a year to forget for Australian investors, with little variation in the performance of major asset classes. Dynamic allocation within portfolios and additional levels of diversification will be critical for 2016 to avoid the feeling of deja-vu.

The consensus view that falling oil prices and a China slowdown are the main drivers of slowing world growth is only half the true story of why global growth is 3% rather than 6% as it was - and could and should be again.

There's a high likelihood that global equities are already in a Bear Market. If so, assessing the likely end of the Bear Market becomes critical. Most importantly is the need to forecast the end of the recession.

Three demographic megatrends support a number of structural growth themes that allow identifiable companies to benefit from strong and compounding cash returns over investible timescales.

As global economic uncertainty persists in the markets, a coherent and structured approach to assess macroeconomic and market scenarios and their impact on investors’ portfolios becomes critical.

In Fodder NZ - Markets off to an ''interesting'' start with articles from Gave and Papic, plus Farrelly and Kitces.

In Fodder - Markets off to an ''interesting'' start with articles from Gave and Papic, plus Farrelly and Kitces.

The FSC has called for a cut in the company tax rate to 22%, funded by an increase in the GST. It's hard to see why FSC made this call, particularly given that its stated number one priority is "working to improve the well-being of all Australians".

2016 has started poorly for the global economy - and horribly for markets. A number of negative themes are ascendant, whereas the positive ones are either pausing or petering out.

Do not be distracted by conventional presumptions about the Fed’s tightening cycle and interest rates. The ultimate bogeyman of this investment cycle will be credit quality and the warning sign will be when banks tighten lending standards.

Disciples of factor-based investing need to respond to a new challenge - while factor analysis is valuable for two reasons, investors are better served by a strategy based solely on allocating to asset classes, a new study claims.

There's a widely held belief that in order to create alpha, a fund manager needs to make meaningful bets away from the market. But is this the reality? Does greater non-market risk actually produce higher alpha?

Today's slowdown is truly global, with economies everywhere contributing to it. We witness "disappointing" growth, quarter by quarter, year after year. The consensus pays too much attention to China as the cause. So what really is behind all this?

Risk tolerance is a key constraint in designing a portfolio, but it should also be considered a key constraint in establishing their goals for investing in the first place.

The Paris terror attacks have severe political, strategic and economic implications. After only one week, the Union moved away from its ideal of free movement of people, and fiscal rules.

I am not at all sure that an eventual interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve should be dismissed as an event with little impact in the real world.

If Paris is not an anomaly, and the frequency or magnitude of terrorist attacks against soft targets in G7 cities increases, what will be the geopolitical, economic and investment consequences?

In October, I joined Dr Woody Brock and PIMCO's Fed watcher, Tony Crescenzi, and 18 senior practitioners for a workshop organised by PortfolioConstruction Forum on where global monetary policy was headed. Three key views emerged.