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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Week in Review Despite positive noises on US-China trade talks, global stocks saw fit to focus on the negatives last week, such as signs of weaker growth in Europe and China and the risk of a US Government shutdown (yet again!). Technically, the US S&P 500 ended the weak clinging to key levels just above
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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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Week in Review In what has been a volatile “risk-on/risk-off” few weeks for global markets, it was the turn of “risk-off” sentiment to prevail last week in the face of continued US-China trade tensions. The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, CFO of major Chinese telecommunications company Huawei (and daughter of its founder and CEO) led to
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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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Week in Review It was a huge (positive) week for global financial markets, thanks to a dovish tilt from the US Federal Reserve and an easing in US-China trade tensions. Equities rose and bond yields fell, while the $A strengthened despite a slump in iron-ore prices. The biggest jolt to markets came from a speech
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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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Week in Review Wall Street officially entered correction territory last week – the second for the year – with the S&P 500 Index dropping a chunky 3.8%. While a further slump in oil prices was a contributing factor – hurting the energy sector – lingering trade fears appeared the main negative, following the failure of
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Week in Review Global equities remained on the back foot last week despite tentative signs of a thawing in US-China trade tensions. China has submitted a list of (modest) trade opening measures while Trump has hinted he may at least postpone planned tariff increases due to take effect in the New Year. Concerns over slowing
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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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