Reading time: 5 minutes Key Market Trends – bonds still driving equities There were more modest moves in global financial markets over July, with earlier aggressive expectations of US Federal Reserve interest rate cuts tempered somewhat by signalling from the Fed. US-China trade tensions also continued to linger while markets braced for the Q2 US

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Reading time: 5 minutes According to a Bloomberg report from June 2019, more than 20% (or US$11 trillion worth) of the investment-grade bonds on issue worldwide were trading at negative yields. In other words, investors buying these bonds know that if they hold them to maturity, they will receive cashflows over the life of the

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Reading time: 3 minutes Market cap-weighted share indices can tend to overweight overvalued stocks and underweight undervalued stocks. Investing based on quality, on the other hand, does not consider a stock’s market capitalisation – rather it applies certain quality factors. This approach aims to produce superior performance to market cap-weighted indices, and arguably best demonstrates

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Reading time: 5 minutes The election of Boris Johnson as the U.K.’s new Prime Minister has heightened Brexit concerns.  As this note will demonstrate, however, these concerns have already been at least partly priced into the U.K.’s FTSE-100 Index – and perhaps unduly so given the global orientation of its most highly-weighted companies.  Exposure to

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Reading time: 3 min As 2019 reaches its half-way point, we have seen a continued and marked preference by investors for passive strategies at the expense of actively managed strategies, along with an overall preference for investing via the ETF structure. Overall U.S. ETFs received ~US$56B of net inflows versus outflows in traditional managed funds

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Reading time: 5 minutes There are at least three reasons why it may make sense to have some exposure to government bonds in your portfolio. And in this regard, relatively long “duration” government bonds – such as through the newly launched BetaShares Australian Government Bond ETF (ASX Code: AGVT) – potentially offer the most advantageous

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Reading time: 4 minutes INDUSTRY BREAKS THE $50B BARRIER! It has been another strong performance by the Australian ETF industry in the first six months of 2019. The industry’s funds under management increased by a very significant 25% for the half, to end the financial year at a new record high of $50.9B, with the

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Reading time: 4 minutes Last month, the Toronto Raptors won their first NBA Championship in franchise history against the Golden State Warriors, who had one of the most dominant offences of the last five years.  It is interesting to analyse how the Raptors pulled it off.  Not only did they lead offensively by scoring more

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Reading time: 5 minutes Key Market Trends – bond-driven equity rally May’s US-China trade fears gave way to central bank easing hopes in June, with a further decline in bond yields helping power a rebound in global equity markets.  New dovish signals from the US Federal Reserve saw the $US weaken while the $A firmed

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Reading time: 3 minutes Determining how to spread your funds across investment asset classes of varying risk and potential return is one of your most important investment decisions. Having a lot invested in equities will likely mean your long-run returns will be higher, but also that you will have to endure more volatility along the

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