Bruce visited Bunnings in March. This might not seem terribly noteworthy, after all, he does tend to end up there most weekends, but this visit required more time: to the first Bunnings store outside Australia and NZ. Show More

2016 again showed how difficult it is to predict equity market returns over time periods as short as 12 months. After a dramatic fall at the start of the year, the Australian equity market went on to produce its best annual return since 2013 and its fifth consecutive year of... Show More

Johan Carlberg, Lead Portfolio Manager at Alphinity, identifies three key drivers of relative sector performance in the Australian equity market in 2016: 1) the turnaround in commodity prices and resources stocks beginning in February; 2) the rise in bond yields and subsequent underperformance of yield proxy stocks from July; and... Show More

Our Principal and Portfolio Manager, Bruce Smith, recently made a trip to the UK and USA to look for insights into likely future developments for the Australian-listed globally-focused property companies. There were two in which we presently have positions (Goodman Group and Lendlease) and one we don’t presently own but... Show More

In September, I conducted four days of energy-related meetings in Dallas and Houston. The goal was to review current industry conditions and the production outlook for 2017. I met with majors (BP, Shell, BHP), large US shale producers (Range, Anadarko, EOG, Apache), services companies (CBI, Schlumberger, Halliburton), US LNG producers/projects... Show More

The telecommunications sector is made up of a handful of companies but the most substantial is Telstra with a market cap of more than $60 billion. Telstra presently makes up more than 4% of the ASX300 so it has the opportunity to be a meaningful positive or negative contributor to... Show More

The August FY16 reporting season as usual provided winners and losers. While we are likely to do some portfolio adjustments as a result of the new information released with company results, the most important question in coming months will most likely be how to position for a potentially changing macro... Show More

When ANZ announced a result that was below analyst expectations, included unexpected write-offs and cut their dividend, their stock price rallied by ~5% in one day. To the fundamental investor, this seems counter-intuitive, but there could be more at play than meets the eye. “ANZ had materially underperformed the market... Show More

In March I spent a week traveling throughout the US in order to gauge the rate of recovery taking place in the US homebuilding sector which was significantly impacted by the Global Financial Crisis. We are 7 years past the peak of the crisis and from a financial markets perspective,... Show More

The heightened market uncertainty in our view warrants a defensive portfolio positioning. This, however, begs the question – what is a defensive company in today’s market? The valuation dispersion between stable or growing companies and more cyclically-exposed companies is now the highest since the financial crisis (see chart). So is... Show More

My trip to the US in November was to better understand the economics of the various shale oil basins and the strategies being pursued by oil producers, to assess whether the oil price recovery assumed by the market is realistic or overly optimistic. I was of the view that the... Show More

Bruce Smith, Portfolio Manager at Alphinity, highlights the relatively strong performance of Telstra shares amidst the recent market volatility. Smith says the consistent earnings upgrade cycle since 2011 has been a significant contributing factor to the strong performance of Telstra shares. The combined effect of earnings upgrades and multiple expansion... Show More

No longer patient but not impatient; bad data is good data? Financial markets appear to have taken US Federal Reserve (Fed) watching to new heights in recent months… How equity markets will react to the reality of higher US interest rates when it finally occurs is more difficult to say.... Show More

Companies exposed to Australia's housing market will continue to gather momentum, as effects of low interest rates, the pick-up in building approvals and net immigration are felt across the industry. Investors can expect activity in housing markets to continue to strengthen. Principal and Lead Portfolio Manager Mr Carlberg said: We... Show More

Andrew Martin, Portfolio Manager at Alphinity, argues that although banks might be considered fair-value - investors could be underestimating the effect of increased competition, which has surged since the GFC. For a long time coming out of the GFC the banks had very little competition at all, so they took... Show More