In this week's Fodder - El-Erian & Kaletsky on oil plus 2 top rated presentations from Conference with Moshe Milevsky & Chris Watling

In this week's Fodder - El-Erian & Kaletsky on oil plus 2 top rated presentations from Conference with Moshe Milevsky & Chris Watling

The progress we have seen in European markets in 2015 is sustainable over the next 12 months. But, investors should temper return expectations and anticipate continued market volatility.

The outlook for developed credit markets, and in particular the US credit market, remains constructive. Here are Three reasons support the case for credit now.

Real return investing isn't too real at all, with big targets like CPI+5%. It is an objective that is not strongly linked to the reality of investment markets - so prepare for another investment approach aligned with disappointment.

This week's Fodder picks up where last week's onstage PortfolioConstruction Forum Conference 2015 left off, by continuing to address our theme, "Crossroads - Dilemmas | Decisions".

Conference 2015 featured a carefully selected faculty of more than 35 international and local portfolio construction experts offering their best high conviction ideas about critical portfolio "crossroads". This Resources Kit is a deluge of videos, podcasts, and papers for all sessions of the jam-packed program so you can "attend" and earn CPD.

Fears that China's economy is teetering on the edge of collapse are exaggerated. But it is slowing. And the slowdown will inevitably highlight problems that until now have remained largely hidden, triggering fresh bouts of market volatility.

If you want to understand falling oil prices, forget Chinese consumption and focus on Middle East production. And, if you want to understand the world economy, forget about stock markets - focus on the fact that cheap oil always boosts global growth.

This week's market correction is long overdue. It is also not over because the true underlying problems are much more serious than the commonly cited causes. And, at last, markets are teaching Xi and Li who in fact is the boss.

Changing client behaviour was an essential part of a financial planner's skills, yet that part of the job had not been approached with the same level of scientific rigour as a planner's technical skills.

It's a paradox in financial planning that the so-called "hard" skills are actually the easiest to master, while the so-called "soft" skills are often the hardest.

There are two possible outcomes from the extreme debt levels in the global economy - high inflation or long-term below trend growth. The key dilemma is how to minimise this uncertainty and return dispersion.

Consumers and the energy industry are at a crossroad. Customer choices are impacting different parts of the energy supply chain, but energy networks themselves are insulated from emerging technologies.

A QMTV (quality, momentum, transition and value) framework can help investors manage buy, hold and sell decisions through various cycles and provide a crossroad signal.

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.