Insights

Reducing overall emissions is one of the greatest issues facing individuals and governments globally. This is evident through a focus on ESG by investors, and governments creating a cost through carbon credits to internalise externalities. So, what are carbon credits...

Gold has been used as a store of wealth since 700 BC when Lydian merchants began producing gold coins. Since then, the world has changed dramatically and with it, the utility of gold. Gold however, can still be used to...

In an environment where higher inflation is more sustained, protecting and then growing the purchasing power of capital becomes the focus of portfolio positioning. Equities are a claim on nominal growth and can therefore perform well in this environment, as...

As an NFL enthusiast and Philadelphia Eagles fan, I’m well aware of the concept of “Time in Possession”, which is a statistic measuring the percentage of a game that a team’s offence has the ball. Time in possession isn’t necessarily...

The last 2-3 weeks have been overshadowed by geopolitical uncertainty regarding Russia-Ukraine unrest, whilst the spectre of higher bond yields and less financial market liquidity is continuing to influence markets. In the past 3 months we’ve seen what the prospect...

There are only two ways to size an investment. You make money and wish you bought more, or you lose money and wish you bought less. While being flippant, what we’re saying is that we invest and choose each position...

The recent decline in many global share indexes has been largely attributable to lower valuations and investment outflows. These outflows where from industry sector to industry sector, from one nation’s index to another, and between asset classes as well as...

Today’s note culminates our aggregate market outlook for 2022, where we summarise our views for the global macro-economy. CY2022 is likely to be a starkly different year to 2020 or 2021, where there were generally one to three main drivers...

Keeping Up with the Kardashians? The investing equivalent should be “keeping up with the property market”, where those born in the 1980s and 90s are finding our nation’s capital cities increasingly expensive and having to take more risk to just...

In building investment portfolios, investors utilise expected return and expected risk to build “optimal” or “efficient” portfolios, which relies on our ability to accurately or reasonably forecast future events and asset prices. But what if our expectations are vastly different...

The essence of investing is to preserve your capital base’s purchasing power, and grow it if possible, in line with investment objectives. In order to formulate a strategy that allows this, we need to have robust processes in place to...

We’re a little over half way through the calendar year and it’s time to review our strategic asset allocation framework to confirm or amend our forecasts for this year. In December, we wrote about how POLICY was trumping FUNDAMENTALS in...

As Jesse mentioned in the introductory note to this risk-off series, investors are constantly faced with the possibility of the extreme, be it to the upside or downside. During 2020 we were faced with both circumstances, with the global pandemic...

Last week several central bankers spoke about their bank’s pathway to normalising monetary policy, which would see a tapering of asset purchase programs and eventual increases to cash rates. Rising bond yields and funding costs has implications to equity valuations,...

The past year has seen markets rapidly evolve through a greater level of retail involvement and an enhanced focus on new asset classes and industries purported to offer a glimpse into our future. However, as momentum behind these trends has...

Industrial metals have historically held strong correlations with inflation, and with good reason. Due to this correlation, they serve as one of the best performing inflation hedge assets, as well as an important bellwether for economic trends. In today’s note,...

Inflation is on everyone’s minds right now – specifically regarding if it will eventuate, and whether it will merely be transitory, or more permanent. Lumber prices have surged over 340% in the past year, providing a dramatic example of inflation...

US President Biden is the man with the plan, having already legislated the American Rescue Plan, he is now seeking approval for the American Jobs Plan, before proposing the next chapter, the American Families Plan. Build Back Better was a...

Diversification is an investment process that seeks to lower portfolio risk in order to achieve a lower variability in returns. The importance of diversification only started to be a mainstream economics concept in the 1950s, when Harry Markowitz wrote his...

Today’s daily missive marks our second last publication for the year and the last of our 2021 outlooks, finishing with our multi-asset view. While it’s useful to derive and forecast performance objectives for specific asset classes, it’s increasingly important to...

If you missed last week’s missive, I’d encourage you to take a look, as today I continue from where we left off last week. The original topic was to deconstruct modern portfolio theory, in order to build portfolios that meet...

Mark Twain once observed: “History does not repeat, but it rhymes.” We are seeing parallels between current markets and 1999, the start of a ten-year period where US equities indices returned negatively. There have been 6 different “Lost Decade” periods...

The world changed last week, and not just because of the US election. Pfizer announced a COVID-19 vaccine that is looking to be over 90% effective in stage 3 clinical trials. The market also knows that many other COVID-19 vaccines...

For investors, risk and return go hand in hand where for a potentially higher return on capital, there is a corresponding increase in risk. This is known as the risk-return trade-off. It is important to be aware that investing is...

I’ve wrote the majority of this note on 2-October and since original time of writing, it has been reported that US President Trump and his wife have tested positive for COVID-19 and have begun their 14-day quarantine period. It would...