Reading time: 2 minutes
One thing that COVID has taught Australians (particularly Victorians) is that the quality of contact tracing is integral to keeping outbreaks to a minimum and ensuring the country can remain open. Time and time again we have heard claims from our politicians of ‘gold standard’ contact tracing,

Read more

Reading time: 4 minutes
With the pandemic dominating the short-term outlook, the longer-term advantages of emerging markets companies become more important in the pursuit of return.
In this guest article, Martin Currie Australia, the investment manager of the BetaShares Legg Mason Emerging Markets Fund (managed fund) (ASX: EMMG),

Read more

Reading time: 4 minutes
Late last week, the Federal Government unveiled the widely anticipated Australian Cyber Security 2020 strategy. The strategy replaces the 2016 strategy¹ and comes on the back of an increase in state and non-state cyberattacks on all levels of Australian government and Australian businesses.

Read more

Reading time: 4 minutes
Video: Quick highlights

Key global trends – equity rally continues
Despite still-rising COVID-19 cases globally – and signs of a tempering in the economic rebound – the V-shaped global equity recovery continued into July. The MSCI All-Country World Equity Return Index rose by 4.0% in local currency terms,

Read more

Reading time: 4 minutes
Video: Quick highlights

Key global trends – equity rally continues
The global equity market recovery continued into June, reflecting a lift in some economic indicators as social distancing restrictions eased and investors remained confident that central banks will keep monetary conditions extremely easy.

Read more

Reading time: 5 mins
As the longest bull market in history has come to an end, the phrase ‘unprecedented times’ arguably has become a cliché. Whilst admittedly there would be few of us alive to have witnessed an event-driven correction of this magnitude, from an economic standpoint we may be on familiar ground.

Read more

Reading time: 4 minutes
Key global trends – equity rally continues
Global equities pushed higher in May, continuing the rebound of the previous month, reflecting ongoing hopes of a speedy return to economic normalcy as both new COVID-19 cases and social distancing restrictions eased further in most advanced economies.

Read more

Reading time: 5 minutes
Key Market Trends – trade tensions return
August saw a return to ‘risk-off’ sentiment in global markets, reflecting a resumption in US-China trade tensions, growing signs that these tensions are impacting on global growth (especially in Asia and Europe) and related fears associated with the renewed inversion of the US yield curve.

Read more

Reading time: 3 minutes
Market cap-weighted share indices can tend to overweight overvalued stocks and underweight undervalued stocks. Investing based on quality, on the other hand, does not consider a stock’s market capitalisation – rather it applies certain quality factors.
This approach aims to produce superior performance to market cap-weighted indices,

Read more

Reading time: 5 minutes
The election of Boris Johnson as the U.K.’s new Prime Minister has heightened Brexit concerns.  As this note will demonstrate, however, these concerns have already been at least partly priced into the U.K.’s FTSE-100 Index – and perhaps unduly so given the global orientation of its most highly-weighted companies. 

Read more