If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a chart is worth a million of them. So we asked the experts to isolate the charts you need to be watching right now. Read on to see 5 charts that Australia’s investment experts never take off their screens, and to... Show More
Most broad-based equity indices around the world predominately comprise mature, old-world industrial businesses, highly geared companies including banks, low quality commodity-based businesses, capital intensive businesses and speculative stocks. For many of these companies the long-term return on capital and organic revenue growth outlook is modest at best. This low-quality equity... Show More
It’s been nearly six months since Marks’ last memo. In the absence of any major shift in global markets, he has taken the opportunity to discuss a more ‘big picture’ issue – the removal of human beings from the investment process. This comes in three main forms; passive or index... Show More
There’s a pithy marketing one-liner that has almost single-handedly produced a multi-billion dollar index-fund and ETF industry. It goes something like this; ‘Most active fund managers underperform the index.’ Show More
I hope to enlighten potential investors about the tricks used by fund managers to ‘window dress’ their performance. Some of these tricks can be backed out and where possible I have provided the math below. Show More
This week Livewire attended the ‘Better Manage your Wealth’ seminar, hosted by Market Matters. The event featured talks by a number of speakers including James Gerrish of Shaw Stockbroking, and Charlie Aitken of AIM. Here’s a wrap on Charlie’s current views on 'the good, the bad, and the ugly'... Show More
In part one we showed how being contrarian can produce huge returns, while in part two we explained how buying companies with owner-managers can also give you an edge. Show More
In The Australian Financial Review I wade into to the contentious "active versus passive" investing debate and argue that "buying a “passive” or “indexed” fund is lobotomised investing predicated on the beliefs that: the market is smarter than you are; investors are systematically rational; assets are always properly valued with... Show More
Over the last 40 years, investors have enjoyed a golden era, able to generate returns of close to 7.50% p.a. in investment grade credit, and over 10% p.a. in equities, with this historical outperformance driven by a handful of factors including rising debt, huge increases in female labour force participation,... Show More
Whether or not active managers add value after fees, over the full economic cycle, has been a widely contested topic in investment circles for many decades. However, as we illustrate in the report below, the fact is that active management works in Australia. The average active manager surveyed outperformed the... Show More
The relentless rise of passive management has seen index-tracking funds grow by $2 trillion over the last three years, and was a key driver for the Henderson-Janus merger. This has re-opened the long-standing debate around active versus passive management, and to gain an industry expert view, Livewire met with Giselle... Show More
The Morphic Perspectives Series is designed to highlight topics and subject matter that we think is particularly relevant to investors and then provide a more in-depth analysis on those topics that goes further than our regular blog posts. This quarters piece looks at the rise of passive investment strategies and... Show More
Passive ETFs returns have been strong, fees have remained low and exposure to the most popular technology stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google – the FANG stocks) has been a boon for investors. Passive ETFs have become so popular that they’re potentially becoming victims of their own success. The FANG... Show More