The Western-led global economic order has had a bad 2023. Surprisingly, the primary cause was not the emergence of an alternative order led by China, as some had anticipated.

On the Hunt is a monthly lecture series focused on the human factors in investment portfolio construction, including the ethical implications. It will help you better identify and understand how investing biases, beliefs and behaviours impact portfolio construction practices - and therefore, investment outcomes - to help you build better quality investor portfolios.

Different ways of presenting an identical set of data lead to very different insights into a fund’s performance. Using an arithmetic graph is by far the easiest to understand - and it can also be the most deceptive.

At this year's FAAA Congress, we asked an expert panel about the implications of a VUCA investment climate for the construction of multi-asset, multi-manager portfolios and for investment conversations with clients.

This paper provides a penetrating view into some of the motivational dynamics in play for individual investors who select sustainability-related investments, and implications for financial intermediaries who manufacture and sell such products.

It is past time to revisit the widely prevailing "free lunch" view of government debt. With a few notable exceptions, those who championed the notion have not acknowledged the likelihood of a new reality.

In the wake of the most rapid and material rise in global interest rates for 50 years, we could be forgiven for scratching our heads at what has happened over 2023. Has monetary policy lost its mojo? Or has 2023 been a "head fake"?

This report summarises the key observations from ASIC's review of how issuers of investment products are meeting design and distribution obligations and areas for improvement.

This lecture argues that client behaviour profiling should be a critical first step of the financial advice process. It examines why ethical client profiling - leveraging off psychology, behavioural finance, ethics, and the financial advice process - is necessary to successfully deliver consistent positive client outcomes. NOTE: This lecture is available for purchase - go to https://portfolioconstructionforum.edu.au/on-the-hunt/

Hamas's barbaric massacre of Israelis on 7 October and Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza to eradicate the group, has introduced four geopolitical scenarios bearing on the global economy and markets.

When seeking exposure to the energy transition, investors typically think of wind and solar farms, and hydrogen and battery production. But the best risk/reward energy transition opportunities can be found elsewhere.

As finance ministers and central bankers convened in Marrakesh for the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in mid October, what surprised veteran analysts the most was the expected calamity that hasn't happened - an emerging-market debt crisis.

When just about every asset price trends upwards, and episodic falls in market prices are quickly reversed, risk management is unrewarded. But the world has changed and portfolio risk management is now critical.

Even in the highly unlikely event that the current geopolitical situation improves rapidly, a deep sense of uncertainty will remain, driven by five economic and financial factors.

As risks related to over-indebted governments, the Russia-Ukraine war and Brexit fuel instability in Europe, the opportunity set for private credit investors is growing.

The WallStreetBets phenomenon - and the sensational short squeeze of Gamestop in 2021 in particular - demonstrated the potentially dramatic influence of collective retail behaviour on financial markets.

Established in 2002, Strategies Conference is THE portfolio construction strategies conference of the year. Presented each August, the program features 50+ carefully selected leading investment thinkers who will challenge and refresh your portfolio construction thinking by debating contemporary and emerging portfolio construction strategies, for you to consider applying in practice to build better quality portfolios.

Those calling for the cash rate to be raised to a more appropriate "real" level or to match the Fed Funds rate to avoid "imported inflation" should be duly ignored.

Could Japan become the world's next great growth story? Warren Buffett seems to think so and the IMF expects the Japanese economy to grow by 1.4% in 2023. But the Japanese economy could also be a ticking time bomb.

Focussing on what we know about the world we live in and figuring out what it might mean for investing is much less glamourous and newsworthy than the prediction game, but it's potentially more rewarding.