Content provided by S&P Dow Jones Indices While comparing active funds against their respective benchmark indices is a typical practice to evaluate their performance, persistence is an additional test that can reveal fund managers’ skills in different market environments. We measure the performance persistence of active funds that outperformed their peers and benchmarks over consecutive…
May 13, 2022
Bringing ESG Considerations to Australian Strategies
Content provided by S&P Dow Jones Indices This paper will demonstrate the potential improvements in environmental, social and governance (ESG) characteristics that are reflected in ESG benchmarks versus traditional market-capitalization-weighted benchmarks in a hypothetical group of Australian equities. We explore how various sustainability-focused indices might provide improved ESG characteristics, while maintaining comparable sectoral and country…
March 18, 2022
Did Active Managers Find Opportunities to Outperform? Year-End SPIVA Australia 2021 report
Content provided by S&P Dow Jones Indices As the global markets started to recover, the S&P/ASX 200 gained 17.2% in 2021. Did active managers find opportunities to outperform in this market environment? The SPIVA Australia Scorecard reports on the performance of Australian active funds against their respective benchmark indices over different time periods. In this…
January 20, 2022
SMSFs & Property series (Part 5): Owning property through a related unit trust with your SMSF
SMSF & Property Series: Part 5 Written by Mary Simmons, Technical Manager, SMSF Association In part 4 of our property series, we discussed how using a fixed unit trust can enable an SMSF to acquire real estate which the SMSF may not otherwise have sufficient funds to acquire itself. It can also assist in diversifying…
December 13, 2021
SMSFs & Property series (Part 4): SMSFs owning property through an unrelated unit trust
SMSF & Property Series: Part 4 Written by Mary Simmons, Technical Manager, SMSF Association In our previous articles in this series, we outlined the more traditional ways an SMSF can invest in property. This has typically involved an SMSF buying the underlying real property, or a portion of it, and receiving rent from the tenants…
October 30, 2020
How private lending can offer diversification in SMSF portfolios
Content provided by Zagga Recently Business Insider posted an article ranking the best and worst performing Australian super funds for 2020 with returns falling within the range of -2% to 9%. YES – you read right. NEGATIVE TWO PERCENT!! Depending on where you are in your retirement planning cycle, this negative return can have a…
October 1, 2020
SPIVA® Australia Mid-Year 2020
Content provided by S&P Dow Jones Indices Market sell-offs were seen in different Australian equity market segments in the first half of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while Australian bonds recorded a small gain. Apart from A-REIT funds, the majority of funds in all categories suffered worse drawdowns versus their respective benchmark indices. All…
September 10, 2020
Integrating ESG Values into Core in Australia
Content provided by S&P Dow Jones Indices An increasing number of investors require indices that are aligned with their investment objectives and their personal or institutional values. The S&P/ASX 200 ESG Index was designed with both of these needs in mind. With the S&P/ASX 200 ESG Index, investors are now able to move ESG from…
July 17, 2020
ATO figures can reveal true picture about LRBAs
Content provided by Thinktank Written by Per Amundsen, Head of Research, Thinktank The numbers around Limited Recourse Borrowing Arrangements (LRBAs), the borrowing instrument that took effect in 2006 to allow self-managed super funds (SMSFs) access to leverage, can easily – and sometimes deliberately – be misinterpreted. Let us cite two examples. In December 2014,…
June 30, 2020
LRBAs hold up well during COVID-19
Content provided by Thinktank Written by Per Amundsen, Head of Research, Thinktank If there has been a common refrain from critics of Limited Recourse Borrowing Arrangements (LRBAs) since their inception in September 2007, it’s that self-managed super funds (SMSFs) using this debt instrument could be fatally exposed in economic or financial crises. Yet 13 years…