The current equity market slump, including ‘Shocktober”, has once again shown the value that bonds can play in investors’ portfolios in terms of offering some downside protection. While this may be obvious to some, what is perhaps less obvious is that compared to the traditional benchmark bond indices which are generally heavily weighted to low-yielding

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This week we sent out to the media our annual ETF predictions for the year ahead after another fascinating year in the industry. At a high level, Australia’s ETF industry is predicted to continue its rapid growth trajectory in 2019, driven by investor demand, product innovation and the evolving requirements of advice models used by

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The BetaShares Weekly Newsletter will be taking a short break during the holiday season but will return on January 31st, 2019.

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Industry ekes out gains in another tough month in equities  Notwithstanding continued market volatility and sharemarket declines, the ETF industry returned to its growth trajectory after last month’s declines, ending the month at $41.1B in assets. The industry’s total market cap grew by 0.8% (+$320m), which was entirely driven by net inflows rather than asset

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After having once worried about rising interest rates due to a strong US economy, global investors are now fearing that the economy is slowing too quickly – as apparently evident from an “inversion” of the US yield curve at some maturities.   This note suggests, however, that even were the yield curve hinting at a slowdown

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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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