It stands to reason that so-called ‘quality companies’, i.e. those with high return on equity (or “ROE”), tend to be able to produce good shareholder returns over time. After all, if a company can generate high profits relative to its invested equity, it is likely to be well positioned to provide attractive investor returns over

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Overview – global equities stage a modest comeback Global equities returned a modest 1.3% in local currency terms during November, partly unwinding their sharp 6.9% slump in October. An easing back in global bond yields supported both bond and equity returns in the month, reflecting persistent low US inflation reports and signals from the US

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The Australian technology sector has enjoyed solid return performance in recent years, so much so that some of the leading companies have been given their own acronym – the so-called “WAAAX” stocks.  As this note demonstrates, however, our home grown technology boom appears somewhat frothier than is the case in the United States, where share

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Alpha – the elixir of life for active managers and the holy grail for investors that select them. Defined as the excess returns above an appropriate benchmark or the ability to improve a portfolio’s risk profile over passive options, it captures the returns attributable to a manager’s skill. Given such skill is a scarce resource,

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Jonathan Baird, Investment Specialist, Western Asset Compared to global peers, Australians tend to have a very low allocation to fixed income (bonds) in their investment portfolios, preferring to allocate to cash and term deposits. Yet bonds can be a reliable and stable income investment, providing a relatively high level of capital stability alongside meaningful diversification

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Forget about fake news – have you heard the good news?  In 1990, 35% of the world’s people lived in absolute poverty.  By 2015, just 9.6% did.  By 2015, more than 1.25 billion people were lifted out of extreme poverty, which is roughly 138,000 people per day. The Brookings Institute calculates that half of the

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Financial research suggests that so-called “quality” companies, i.e. those with high return on equity (or “ROE”), tend to be able to produce market-beating shareholder returns.  But as this note demonstrates, it’s not enough to simply rank companies based on their current ROE – rather consideration must also be given to the likely sustainability of their

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Look beyond the headlines & record trading value! Dramatic sharemarket falls caused the Australian ETF industry to fall in value, declining 3.2% ($1.3B) to end the month at $40.8B.  That said, observers of the industry need to look beyond the headline AuM figure which was caused entirely by asset value depreciation, as net flows were,

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Global stocks took a tumble in October, reflecting ongoing concerns with regard to US interest rates and tech stocks. Gold was the best performing asset class in the month, as rising bond yields also limited returns from fixed-income markets despite the slump in stocks. Australian equities dropped in line with global stocks, while losses in listed

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Financial literacy is a complicated and often sensitive topic. In this post, I won’t cover the personal finance aspects of this area (i.e. saving, budgeting and debt management) and instead I’ll focus on the investment and retirement planning side. Understanding the long-term effects of compounding returns, management fees on investment products, and inflation can help

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