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21 December 2024
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The market share for Exchange Traded Funds and index trackers may increase past optimal levels and stay there for many years. There seems very little if anything that active managers can do to reverse that.
There are signs that passive investing is struggling to keep up in a world that's rapidly passing it by. To understand why, we need to talk about how private equity has revolutionised the investment landscape.
In a recent interview, Morningstar CEO Kunal Kapoor explains why low-cost investing wins, how artificial intelligence and ESG will bring lots of opportunities, and why distractions are an investor's worst enemy.
Famed investor David Einhorn says passive investing has broken markets and it's forced him to change his investment style to stay in business. How has passive investing transformed markets, and what happens next?
John Bogle famously advocated a two-fund portfolio of US stocks and bonds. Recently, I tried to create an Australian version of the Bogle portfolio and found that what seems simple can quickly turn complicated.
The S&P/ASX 200 index is one of the most concentrated sharemarket indices in the world. Equal weighted indices can offer an alternative and have historically outperformed their market capitalisation counterparts.
An index rebalance occurs when the composition of an index changes. Fund managers must buy and sell stocks to match the rebalanced index and to achieve their index-tracking objective, but there are consequences.
In his final letter as CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos implored people to avoid being normal, to nurture their distinctiveness. Fund managers should earn their active fees by building unique, active portfolios.
Based on a long investing career, the author sets out his beliefs without attempting to justify them here. Readers can agree or disagree. It's his guide for friends and family with an actionable variation for risk appetite.
A look at long-term performance gives a sense of perspective that helps tune out short-term noise, focus on your long-term goals and ‘stay the course’. Here are some interactive charts.
Howard Marks' memos to his clients are always worth reading, and when a highly successful manager acknowledges the strengths of index investing, it's worth checking what he says.
Passive investing typically incurs less tax than active investing but should be made even more tax-effective by using losses in the portfolio to offset taxable capital gains.
It’s with heavy hearts that we announce Firstlinks’ co-founder and former Managing Editor, Graham Hand, has died aged 66. Graham was a legendary figure in the finance industry and here are three tributes to him.
Last year, I wrote an article suggesting returns from ASX stocks would trample those from housing over the next decade. One year later, this is an update on how that forecast is going and what's changed since.
Australia is in the early throes of an intergenerational wealth transfer worth an estimated $3.5 trillion. Here's a case study highlighting some of the challenges with transferring wealth between generations.
The Future Fund's original purpose was to meet the unfunded liabilities of Commonwealth defined benefit schemes. These liabilities have ballooned to an estimated $290 billion and taxpayers continue to be treated like fools.
ASFA provides a key guide for how much you will need to live on in retirement. Unfortunately it has many deficiencies, and the averages don't tell the full story of the growing gender superannuation gap.
The Big Four banks have had an extraordinary run and it’s left income investors with a conundrum: to stick with them even though they now offer relatively low dividend yields and limited growth prospects or to look elsewhere.