This blog was updated in February 2019. With the longest bull market run in history maturing, it may be time to start thinking about strategies and solutions that offer protection from volatility and falling markets. A number of commentators and investment market analysts now believe that after significant market rises in 2017 and a mixed

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Ask almost anyone young or old in the western world if they are familiar with Amazon, Google, or Facebook and you would most likely get a resounding “yes!”  However, if I were to ask those same people if they were familiar with Tencent, the answer would probably be “Ten who?” So, who exactly is Tencent

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This is the second part of my discussion on some of the things investors need to consider when choosing between active and passive investment strategies in their portfolios. In my last post a few weeks ago, I provided some definitions to help you understand the ‘lay of the land’. In this second post, I discuss some

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Working for an ETF fund manager, investors and financial advisers simply presume that I’ll always favour a simple passive index-tracking ETF.  Make no mistake, whilst I may think that indexing is the way to go most of the time because of the obvious benefits of instant diversification, lower costs, and the historical inability of the

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I got up early last Saturday morning and started my usual weekend routine.  Made myself a cup of coffee, a piece of toast and logged on to the AFR. Reading through the headlines, I came across many investment themes and ideas and couldn’t help thinking to myself “There’s an ETF for that!” Now this wasn’t

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No longer does it matter whether a company is considered “old world”, for example specialising in energy, or a service company dealing with sensitive client data such as a bank or insurance company, or a company involved in new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence or Crypto assets. The commonality between most businesses nowadays is that

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Exchange traded funds (ETPs) are an excellent option for those new to investing, due to a number of key advantages over other instruments: • Low cost • Liquidity • Potential for diversification • Low minimum investment amount • Wide range of investment choices available These advantages also make ETPs attractive vehicles for various trading and

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If you had hypothetically bought the S&P/ASX 200 back on 1 June 2015, it was trading roughly at 5735 which is close to what the S&P/ASX 200 closed at today (in fact it was trading 5720 as of June 26th).  So does that mean you have finally just broken even if you are still holding

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With the silly season upon us, I feel it’s the perfect time to reflect on 2016. It has been a big year for ETPs in Australia and around the world!  I’ll also try to make some predictions on where I think the future developments may lie for the Australian exchange traded products industry, as we

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The ongoing growth of the Australian ETF industry means that investors who have an interest in obtaining exposure to commodities are now able to choose between Commodity ETFs or Commodity Company ETFs. In this post I describe some of the key differences between these two types of products and why an investor may decide to

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