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5 January 2025
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It's impossible to predict when the next recession will happen. That said, looking at which types of investments have historically fared best during economic downturns can help you limit some of the damage.
The conventional academic view is that markets are efficient as they price in all available information effectively. Yet history shows the market can be wildly wrong on stocks, as may be the case with AI and China today.
Harry Markowitz died last week at the age of 95. He was the 1990 Nobel Laureate and the father of Modern Portfolio Theory. He explained to me the magic moment when he realised how risk-return in portfolios works.
Platforms are an integral part of the financial advice process, delivering efficiencies to advisers and allowing them to cover more clients. But one platform will never be the holy grail as every client is different.
Everyone including investors needs to evolve to get better. Here are five steps to improve your investment toolkit, including thinking probabilistically, running your own race, and measuring yourself objectively.
A new survey suggests almost all wealthy Australians admit to changing their investment behaviour when the value of their portfolios falls. The market falls of 2022 provided a reality check for many investors.
In this environment, safe-haven assets like Government bonds act as a diversifier given the uncorrelated nature to equities during periods of risk-off, while offering a yield above term deposit rates.
During market dislocation events, investors react irrationally and it should be a great environment for active management. The last few years have been an easy ride on tech stocks but it's now all about quality.
Following on from last week's article about the need for 'fun' in investing, a bit of money to shoot for the moon can be investors’ pressure relief valve and stop people tinkering with their main portfolio.
We often assign quality in investment choice by historical returns, backed up when we see fund flows directed towards such historically well-performing funds. This is a mistake made by investors and regulators.
Infrastructure assets experienced varying fortunes during the pandemic, from less travel at airports to strong activity in communications. On the road to recovery, what role does infrastructure play in a portfolio?
Whether they know it or not, most investors use of version of a Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA) to create an efficient portfolio mix of different asset classes, but the benefits of rebalancing are often overlooked.
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.
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.
Unlike family trusts, testamentary trusts are activated posthumously, empowering you to exert post-death control over your assets. Learn how testamentary trusts offer unique benefits and protective measures.
Key lessons include expensive stocks can always get more expensive, Bitcoin is our tulip mania, follow the smart money, the young are coming with pitchforks on housing, and the importance of staying invested.
While the performance of the largest super funds has been admirable, they’ve become so big that it will make it difficult for them to outperform their benchmarks in future. It will be important for you to pick your fund wisely.