Consumers and the energy industry are both at a crossroads - hence the exclusion of some parts of the electricity supply chain from the investible universe of low-risk global listed infrastructure securities.

Six years into a bull market, Australian equity values are beginning to look stretched. But large divergences in valuations across sectors are creating great opportunities for truly active managers.

The increasing concentration of the Australian stock market indices is mirrored by the concentration of the Australian funds management industry. What does this mean for alpha generation?

Investors can substantially improve the risk/return characteristics of their strategic asset allocation by considering not only the classic equity premium, but also other premiums present in the equity market.

Infrastructure has gained greater focus in recent years, with investors drawn to its defensive characteristics. But infrastructure investing requires a tight definition to deliver the defensive attributes that investors are targeting.

The longer interest rates stay negative, the more distortions will appear in financial markets. Certain trends are already in place which could ultimately lead to severe distortions.

Investors should not buy stocks merely based on their volatility (or other risk) characteristics, but also take into account factors that are known to have a large impact on returns, such as valuation and momentum.

Although it is widely appreciated that past performance is not a guide to future returns, it is less appreciated that past diversification is not a guide to future risk.

There are three escapes the Fed had to make in order to declare its mission a success - escape from a liquidity trap, escape from quantitative easing, and, escape from the zero bound. Only the last remains. Will it achieve its great escape? Probably.

While the debate over the value of active investment management has intensified in recent years, the outperformance of boutique managers over non-boutiques and indices has been overlooked.

High active share is often profiled as "better" but such portfolios can exhibit risk concentrations which may lead to volatile return streams. Low active share funds should not be excluded from asset allocators’ tool kit.

The rise of liquid alternatives not only marks an improvement on traditional fund of hedge funds, it also makes a hedge fund allocation a genuine competitor with other onshore absolute return solutions.

This report explores institutional investors' attitudes toward equity market risk and looks at the downside protection strategies they are using to insure their portfolios against volatility.

Traditionally, risk management might have been considered as a monitoring activity only. Risk analysis, can, however, add value at the earlier stages of the investment process.

The US Federal Reserve is (reluctantly) ending a long period of abnormally low rates. Traditional drivers of portfolio returns such as productivity and earnings growth are set to reassert themselves.

There are a number of reasons to be optimistic about China's long-term economic future, but the short-to-medium term challenges are considerable.

China is a glass both half full and half empty. It will continue to grow and become a great superpower, but its future growth rate will be significantly lower than President Xi's "new normal" 6% forecast.

The challenge in finding differential skill among active managers reflects a surfeit, not a dearth, of skill. This is the major lesson of the paradox of skill. As Napoleon was reported to say, "Ability is nothing without opportunity."

As we have just witnessed, it took an enormous effort to keep Greece in the eurozone. In the end, Europe could deal with the problem. For other members, such propping up will not always be possible. What happens next in France, Spain and Italy may well turn out to be more worrying than anything we have seen around Athens so far.

A simple ratchet-style "safe" withdrawal rate approach, where spending is increased by 10% any time the portfolio rises more than 50% above its starting value, beats the traditional 4% rule, generating equal or better retirement spending, even while being conservative enough to not require a spending cut in the event of a market pullback in the future.