Global financial markets have been reacting to the Covid-19 pandemic since early 2020, providing a unique opportunity for researchers to examine the impact of a global pandemic on uncertainty, investor reactions, and stock prices.

High allocations to alternatives are often justified on the basis of return and diversification advantages. Two recent papers show that with private equity and hedge fund, it's the managers who are the real winners.

Many research papers address the investment performance of sustainable investing - few have investigated whether this form of investing actually achieves the intended good. Two papers address that gap.

Target date funds first became popular as a MySuper option. Leaving aside whether target date funds are a good idea in the first place, what these two papers highlight is a lack of thought in their design.

Value investing proved to be successful strategy for nearly a century, before experiencing one of its worst performance periods in the last few years. These two papers examine whether implementation or low interest rates are the culprit.

While the retirement income system is designed to accommodate all individuals, the real test is its adequacy for the poor. These two papers address this issue for both Australia and the US.

Emotions are an important influence on financial decision-making and investing. These three papers explore how emotional regulation strategies influence decision-making under risk and uncertainty, and the link to financial success.

Investors rely on both their competence and confidence to make investment decisions. The overconfidence effect is sometimes dubbed the "mother of all biases".

These two papers provide useful insights into how investors' attitudes and behaviours evolve over time, and how our beliefs are distorted if we experience positive or negative prior returns.

Even armed with objective probabilities to help decision-making, people often add their own subjective "weights". Two papers explain this "probability weighting" and how it affects investment decisions.

The farrelly's Dynamic Asset Allocation Handbook (Mar 2021) has been assessed and accredited by Portfolio Construction Forum for Continuing Education (CE/CPD) hours. Subscribers must complete a CE Quiz to receive CE/CPD accreditation.

Finology - behavioural FINance and investor psychOLOGY - knowledge and skills substantially enhance practitioners' ability to communicate with clients and manage portfolios more effectively. This Backgrounder seeks to foster a greater understanding of and interest in finology.

The farrelly's Dynamic Asset Allocation Handbook Australia (Dec 2020) has been assessed and accredited by Portfolio Construction Forum for Continuing Education (CE/CPD) hours. Subscribers must complete a CE Quiz to receive CE/CPD accreditation.

The farrelly's Dynamic Asset Allocation Handbook NZ (Dec 2020) has been assessed and accredited by Portfolio Construction Forum for Continuing Education (CE/CPD) hours. Subscribers must complete a CE Quiz to receive CE/CPD accreditation.

Beliefs interact with investors' biases and preferences to ultimately influence their behaviour. Two recent papers highlight the impact of individual investors' beliefs about the future and the impact on portfolio behaviour and composition, as well as market returns.

Relatively little is known about what greed is and does. These two papers highlight the importance of greed in economic behaviour, and to a greater chance of engaging in ethically questionable behaviour.

Culture explains much about how we think, feel, and behave. These two papers explore the influence of culture and cultural distance in a financial context.

These two papers provide a more sophisticated, behavioural understanding of time discounting, to enable more nuanced conversations with clients about current and future consumption, and help mitigate the potentially negative impacts of present bias.

These two research papers present insights into how advisers can better assess and guide how clients think about and structure goals - including savings goals.

Market pricing goes to the heart of everything we do in constructing portfolios. But the risk-free rate is artificial as central bank manipulate interest rates to stimulate economies. The implications for asset allocation are significant.