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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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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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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The recent decline in equity prices has once again highlighted the importance of asset allocation and portfolio diversification.  As will be demonstrated in this note, although corporate bonds and hybrid securities have some exposure to credit risk, their valuations have held up relatively well during the recent period of equity market turmoil. This highlights their

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The recent surge in US bonds yields has caught the attention of investors worldwide and forced a re-think over the equity outlook.  This note suggests, however, that higher rates need not kill the bull market anytime soon, provided corporate earnings remain upbeat and inflation contained. Market comes around to the Fed’s thinking As evident in

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Although American based tech giants – such as Google, Facebook and Amazon – are already household names, it may surprise some investors to know that Asia has technologically leapfrogged the U.S. in several respects and has many successful tech megastars of its own.  As this note will demonstrate, these Asian tech tigers – exposure to

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Thanks to rapid technological advances, the global robotics and artificial intelligence (A.I.) sectors stand poised to significantly boost global economic productivity and redress worker shortages caused by population ageing over coming decades.  As this note will demonstrate, moreover, the robot revolution also offers the growth potential to reward investors who tap into this emerging global

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