morningstar

Brisbane-based equity manager, Hyperion, has once again topped the table of equity managers covered by independent research house Morningstar. The group swept three categories for its outstanding performance in 2020, in large-cap Australian shares, small-cap Australian shares and large-cap global shares. According to Morningstar the funds in order returned 33.3%, 33.7% and 46.0% respectively in…

I’ll do my best to avoid cliches, but to say 2020 was difficult would be an understatement. There is little doubt that we are all sick of hearing terms like ‘pivot’, ‘WFH’, or ‘iso’. Yet as we emerge, hopefully, from the darkest period for worldwide health and worldwide economic uncertainty in living memory [remember there…

Australian managed funds are the worst in the world for disclosing to investors what stocks they buy and other portfolio information crucial to making informed decisions. They are also poor at disclosing their ESG and stewardship policies and practices, compared with most other major countries. But the good news is that they are among the…

New retail investors entered the sharemarket in droves over the first six months of the pandemic’s impact. Contrary to widely held views, for the most part, on average, they did very well. Very well indeed. But one has to be careful of averages. They can often mask skews from big single numbers and rarely do…

Four years ago, old high-school buddies Nicholas Quinn and Jesse Moors were taking in the sunshine at a café on Melbourne’s Southbank, when they decided to take their mutual interest in stock market investment to the next level. Quinn, a former PwC global tax specialist, and Moors, formerly a business development manager at CPA Australia,…

The term balanced fund has been somewhat maligned after being the core product of insurance salesmen throughout the 70s and 80s to the catch all for high and low risk superannuation options it is today. Yet with uncertainty comes opportunity, and a new breed of ‘balanced fund’ is emerging. The All-Weather portfolio, run by Melbourne-based…

Focusing on three sectors of Australian shares for direct purchases, sectors favoured by SMSF trustees and other individual investors, Morningstar offered its top picks at the annual Morningstar Investment Conference last week (October 8-9). Cognisant of market volatility, valuations, dividend policies and the importance of fundamentals in uncertain times, three Morningstar researchers – Johannes Faul,…

Given the global outlook is clearly one of a high degree of risk, it is surprising that all forms of risk assets seem to continually defy all the negative outlooks. Traditional asset allocations have been heavily tied to equity market growth and the continual decline in risk free interest rates over the past 30 years….

Double-digit returns seem to be a thing of the past for many investors. But one global equity growth fund has withstood the test of time and volatility to continually deliver high returns and outperform the index. Growth managers have continued to show their wares this year and Franklin Templeton’s $405 million (as at 30 April…

Investing in a Platinum Asset Management fund to gain international equity exposure is no longer a done deal after it had a mixed outcome in its latest ratings, with three funds downgraded and one upgraded to gold. Research house Morningstar downgraded Platinum International, Platinum Global and Platinum Unhedged to bronze due to “a lack of…