Investment News

Quantitative investment specialist, Research Affiliates (RAFI), has found benchmark-binned stocks tend to deliver outsized returns post eviction. Conversely, the study, which spawned a new RAFI strategy, shows freshly promoted stocks typically underperform after promotion to an index. “Additions modestly underperform their index over the subsequent year on average, with S&P 500 additions lagging the market… [Read More…]

If you ask investors right now what the biggest threat to markets is, you’ll get a wide range of responses. It might be private credit, algorithmic trading, or some liability-driven investment blowup shooting back from the future to wreak havoc on the present like Arnold’s Terminator. Models of the world upon which new investments are… [Read More…]

Fisher Funds long-standing head of fixed income, David McLeish, has left the business amid a wider management shake-up at the $26 billion firm. McLeish touted an “exciting new opportunity” on LinkedIn was in the offing after an almost 14-year career at Fisher that spanned dramatic, acquisition-led growth in the funds management operation. He is listed… [Read More…]

US-headquartered funds management firm, Fisher Investments, is looking to open a high net-worth advisory office in NZ with plans afoot to hire five advisers ahead of a launch at the back-end of 2024. According to a Fisher spokesperson, the business plans to “start operations with our private client business in New Zealand later this year”…. [Read More…]

AMP remains in the advice game in NZ despite engineering an exit strategy from its long-held and troublesome Australian financial advisory networks last week. In an historic deal inked with a recently formed Australian financial planning conglomerate, Entireti, and AZ Next Generation Advisory (AZ NGA), AMP will offload its multiple advice businesses for a combined… [Read More…]

The NZ retail funds sector nudged $200 billion in the March quarter amid strong investment performance and solid flows, according to the latest Plan for Life (PFL) market data. Overall, retail funds under management (FUM) surged 5.4 per cent during the three months to March 31, equating to about $10.9 billion, and 14.6 per cent… [Read More…]

KiwiSaver exposure to growth assets continued to climb back over the 12 months to June 30 to fall just short of 59 per cent, new Morningstar data shows, up 2.6 per cent year-on-year. The result is still shy of the almost 64 per cent growth allocation recorded in the June 2022 report – a figure… [Read More…]

The UK government is set to follow the Australian example by pressuring default pension funds to perform or fold under a new draft ‘framework’ released last week. Certain default defined contribution UK pension schemes will face scrutiny across a range of ‘value-for-money’ measures in the proposed regime with persistent under-performers forced to transfer members. “Schemes… [Read More…]

Mercer Australia has copped an A$11.3 million fine in a “landmark” greenwashing court action set to shake-up product-labelling practices on both sides of the Tasman. While Mercer admitted to the charges laid last year relating to environmental, social and governance (ESG) claims in its ‘Sustainable Plus’ fund range, the Australian High Court opted to impose… [Read More…]

Passive investing has wandered far off the path first cleared by Vanguard founder, John Bogle, in the 1970s. Investors are now stumbling around in an index jungle increasingly populated by products that bear only a loose resemblance to the simple capitalisation-weighted stock market funds designed by Bogle et al, according to a new CFA Institute… [Read More…]