ARTICLES

Goals Based Investing (GBI) continues to gain recognition and be better understood amongst advisers. In his article Goals Based Investing: Should it be the norm? Giuseppe Ballocchi describes GBI as the way of the future for financial advice. Are we finally seeing a shift from the more traditional Strategic Asset Allocation approach to GBI? The simple answer is yes. Why, because it makes sense. Client goals should determine investment decisions. And, there is a rising school of thought that SAA investing will not suit likely market conditions going forward.

By now, the situation is clear. Many economies are gradually slowing down or have already entered a recession (think European powerhouse “Germany”). A recession affecting even the ‘greatest’ economy of them all is probably right in front of us. As a result, how investors position their portfolios this coming quarter and in 2020 may be all that matters.

Jerome Lander is the Portfolio Manager at Dynamic Asset and one of Australia's leaders in the Goals Based Investing landscape.

Nearly 20 years after the last technology bubble, we’re in funny season again, and you don’t need to be an economics PhD to see it. Crazy valuations are being ascribed to stocks that have never made a dollar, in the hope they’ll become like Amazon one day. Think loss making stocks being priced on huge multiples of revenue implying that strong growth will continue for many many years in an otherwise low growth market. There is indeed a growing growth bubble in the ‘bubble in everything’.

The market environment has changed. Yet most advisers’ portfolios have not. They may want to adapt fast if they want their clients better suited to the new market environment - assuming they’re not going to unduly suffer more weak returns going forward as they did in 2018.

An alternative investment is an investment product other than traditional investments such as stocks, bonds or cash. 

The two significant trends in contemporary financial advice are Goals Based Investing and Managed Investment Services. While the client and business drivers of each are independent, both innovations are set to transform financial advisory practices over the coming years.

The recent equity market rally in response to dovish FED language again highlights how dependent equity markets are on government stimulus and sugar hits.

There is (arguably of course) a bubble in nearly every mainstream asset class. A bubble in debt markets, a bubble in property, a bubble in equity, a bubble in private assets, and a bubble in the way portfolios are managed. This is an artificially created result of easy monetary and fiscal policies that have been employed by global governments for many years now in an effort to boost asset prices (successfully). These policies appear unsustainable in the long term. If something can’t be sustained, then eventually it won’t be…