The Australian sharemarket has struggled to match the performance of global peers in recent years. While a number of theories have been put forward to explain our relatively poor returns, this note suggests two factors tend to dominate: trends in export commodity prices and the health of the global technology sector.  On this basis, it

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Whilst a number of Australian investors derive the majority of income from their share portfolios from the 20 largest companies on the ASX, there can be significant benefits to diversifying away from these shares and looking at the remaining 180 companies that make up the S&P/ASX 200 Index. Indeed, recent reductions in dividends and the

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Investing success is often not just about picking the right asset class or securities – but also avoiding the poor investments.  In the current global economic environment, out of the world’s major asset classes, it’s hard to go past global bonds as having potentially the lowest likely return over the next year or so. Let

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The political risks in one of Europe’s major economies have lifted in recent weeks, with fears that the Spanish region of Catalonia might elect to become independent. In turn, this could lead to a re-run of wider European break-up fears, with consequent risk for the Euro currency and European equity markets.  Due to the likely

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With the Australian ETF industry recently hitting a record $31B in assets, made up mostly of net new money rather than due to an increase in market value, we are now starting to see a new wave of savvy investors adopting ETFs as core building blocks in their portfolios. For these new investors, or just

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For the second year in a row, BetaShares has been awarded “ETF Manager of the Year” at the 2017 Professional Planner & Zenith Fund Manager Awards. The Awards bring together the acknowledged quality of Zenith’s investment research capabilities with the leading independent publication in the financial planning space to recognise sustained excellence in the area

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The re-affirmed prospect of higher US interest rates – and renewed talk of tax cuts – suggests the year-long slide in the $US may be finally coming to an end.  While a firmer $US would in itself also tend to weaken the $A (at least against the greenback), weaker iron-ore prices and a steady RBA

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Although the official measure of house price inflation suggested Sydney property gains remained solid in the June quarter, more timely indicators point to a softening in this long red-hot market. That’s consistent with estimates suggesting mortgage affordability constraints in Sydney are now around previous peak levels.  Meanwhile, better value appears evident in other capital cities,

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Fixed-income investors seeking safety in bonds be warned: it took only a relatively modest rise in bond yields over the past year for Australia’s headline bond index to post negative returns.  This result highlights the risks that traditional fixed-rate bond investments currently pose to investors in an environment of low but rising bond yields.  By

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