Sharemarkets have been in turmoil for several weeks, with few portfolios unaffected and volatility at all time highs. As a result, we’ve received many questions from investors relating to their ETF investments. We thought we’d use this post to provide answers to 4 of the most common:

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Key Global Trends – equities retreat
The coronavirus-led ‘risk-off’ trade that started to build in late January continued into February and the early weeks of March. Global equities have reversed their uptrend* seen through most of 2019, while the downtrend in bond yields and uptrend in gold prices has continued.

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Fears around the impact of the coronavirus have been compounded by oil’s woes, causing the biggest falls on Wall Street since the GFC. On Monday, the S&P 500 index fell 7.6%, triggering the first automatic halt in trading in more than two decades,

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Key Global Trends – virus fears

Global equities started the new year on a strong footing, thanks to an easing in global trade tensions. That said, new fears related to the coronavirus have more recently caused a setback, such that overall global equities posted a modest 0.7% decline in January. 

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Records smashed!
Records were broken all over the ETF industry globally in 2019, and Australia was no different. The Australian ETF industry surged past the $60B milestone and ended the year at $61.8B, an all-time high, and a full 52% higher than its level as at the end of 2018 ($41B). 

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Thanks to their ability to provide exposure to a range of asset classes, it has long been possible to build a low-cost diversified portfolio using only a handful of exchange traded funds (ETFs).  But the innovation does not end there: it’s now possible to get a diversified portfolio –

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When it comes to thinking about returns from your Aussie shares, for many people, dividends are a big part of the story, and historically dividends have made up a significant proportion of the total returns of Australian sharemarket.
Australian companies on average have among the highest dividend yields¹ and payout ratios² in the developed world.

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Earlier this month Symantec Corp., possibly the best-known name in cybersecurity, completed the sale of its Enterprise cybersecurity business, and the rights to the Symantec name, to Broadcom Inc. Symantec Corp., which makes Norton Antivirus, kept its consumer business but has rebranded as part of the deal,

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Key Global Trends – bond yields snap back

Trend signals for major markets remained unchanged last month.  Though they remain in a sharp downtrend, global bonds yields rebounded strongly in September as the US and China agreed to resume trade talks and the US Federal Reserve indicated it might not need to cut interest rates as aggressively as the markets had thought.

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With interest rates at historic lows, investors who rely on cash or government bonds for income returns are having a harder time making ends meet.
For risk-conscious investors, the good news is that there is a range of innovative cash and fixed income investment exposures on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) that offer attractive income returns,

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