Conference 2013 facilitated debate on the markets, strategies and investing with particular focus on how to better construct portfolios for the whole of an investor's life so that they are more likely to achieve their goals.

A growing army of data scientists is mining patterns from our online activity. What are the implications for investment?

Indonesia's rise is one of the big stories of the Asian century, a future great power in Asia, just behind China and India. Indonesia may matter as much to Australia investors as China and the US.

All of the Conference sessions are building blocks for this session which helps delegates determine the key takeouts from the jam-packed program and actions delegates should take when building investor portfolios.

To build a truly diversified portfolio, you need to consider alternative investments as a third dimension alongside equities and fixed income.

Multi-asset absolute return investing offers more certainty of achieving the right outcome for clients and portfolios which are more sustainable through an investor’s life stages.

A fundamental-based approach to equity index investing can be a powerful way to reduce risk and improve performance over the investment lifecycle.

Top performing shares often display a high ROE, while poor performing shares display the reverse - making ROE a superior valuation input to PE ratios.

Australians have sought offshore diversification for years. The logical extension is to think more deeply about how to make offshore exposures complement local ones.

Agricultural equities is the 'third leg' of the global natural resources sector, joining energy and mining.

Real return funds with their more dynamic and go-anywhere structures are designed to be able to navigate through difficult and normal times. Can they really deliver?

If you're making investments you can't sell for 10 years, how do you go about selecting them? What lessons can be learned from history?

Simplifications taken in building Australian equity strategies may result in a portfolio that doesn't achieve what it's been designed to do, particularly in relation to income and volatility.

Allocating to countries with net wealth rather than net debt can lead to superior portfolio outcomes.

Under the lifecycle investing approach, real return outcomes are the most crucial measure of investment outcomes. But managing real return risk involves thinking differently about what risk really means in portfolios.

The first argument for investing in emerging markets is that's where the growth is. That said, high economic growth does not necessarily imply high stock returns.

China needs to embrace a stronger RMB - can it become the EM's Duetsche Mark - while Japan has embarked on a structurally weak yen, with profound implications for the rest of the world.

Reforms undertaken after the 1997 crisis drive the economic resilience of South East Asia today. Going forward, cyclical risks exist, but the region is set to do better still.

China has a very new type of leader. It is in the sphere of domestic politics and economic policy, in particular, that the extent of Xi's power and his policy preferences are unclear. The signals have been mixed.

For most, human capital is the most important source of financial capital and consumption through life. Nurturing, managing and protecting it is of paramount importance.