Investment Themes for a New Decade - 8 February, 2010 Over a tumultuous decade that included the September 11 terrorist attacks, Middle-East wars, the Global Financial Crisis, the rise to prominence of China and increased focus on climate change, the S&P 500 lost 24% while the All Ords rose 57%. What lies in store for the next decade? more

Why Is Our Sharemarket Falling? - 5 February, 2010 It’s a surprise that the stockmarket is falling even though economic data here and abroad are largely positive. more

Alpha RESULTS Series 3 NOW OPEN - 5 February, 2010 Good news – by taking advantage of higher market volatility over the last couple of weeks, we have been able to achieve very strong pricing for Alpha RESULTS Series 3 and as a result will now be offering this series, launching Monday 8 February 2010, WITHOUT the inclusion of the auto call facility. more

The Correction We Had To Have (And Why You Need To Do Something About It) - 5 November, 2009 The recent strong run in the Australian share market has all but removed the post GFC fear from most investor’s minds. more

THE GROWTH OF ASIA AND SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR AUSTRALIA - 19 October, 2009 more

Why Australia’s stockmarket will grow for the next decade - 28 September, 2009 Unlike most of the developed world, Australia’s economy grew quickly after the GFC and is on track for good GDP growth next year and onwards. more

Risk control is the new investment paradigm - 28 September, 2009 Slipping in under the post GFC radar, in May this year Standard & Poor’s launched a new set of indices, the S&P “Controlled Risk” ASX 200 index – complementing a range of similar indices launched over offshore markets. more

The 2009 Shann Memorial Lecture - 1 August, 2009 There are three aspects of Shann’s life and work that particularly resonated with me as I sought to become more familiar... more

Covered Call Strategy Suited to Super The latest study, by Nadima El-Hassan, Tony Hall, and Jan-Paul Kobarg of The University of Technology Sydney (UTS), analysed the performance over the period July 1997 to June 2004 of a portfolio invested 40% in Australian equities, 25% in international equities, 20% in fixed income, 10% in property, and 5% in cash, where a covered call strategy was implemented by selling slightly out-of-the-money stock call options on the Australian equity component of the portfolio as represented by the stocks in the S&P/ASX 20 Index. more

A super strategy - Feb 2009 This will be the year to remain in, and where possible increase, your self managed super fund’s (SMSF) exposure to Australian equities. more

No Greenshoots for Bond Investors (full version) Greenshoots or not, there has been a profound change in the Australian and US equity markets since March this year, vindicating the actions of global central bankers to stem the systemic problems of the GFC. The resulting stock market rallies can best be explained as a direct result of those regulatory efforts and the likelihood that they have allowed us to avoid a complete global melt down more

No Greenshoots for Bond Investors Greenshoots or not, there has been a profound change in the Australian and US equity markets since March this year, vindicating the actions of global central bankers to stem the systemic problems of the GFC. The resulting stock market rallies can best be explained as a direct result of those regulatory efforts and the likelihood that they have allowed us to avoid a complete global melt down more

Buy BRIC to Weather the Storm BRIC is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China and was coined by Goldman Sachs in their global economics paper “Building Better Global Economic BRIC’s” in 2001. By 2007 GS were able to write: more

Alpha BRIC 40 Update Alpha Structured Investments has two BRIC specific investments in the market, Alpha BRIC 40 Plus Series 1, which matures later this year and Alpha BRIC 40 Plus Series 2, which matures next year. more

BRIC – Leading the investment opportunities for 2009 The GFC of 2008 hastened the already occurring relative demise of the US and many developed economies relative to the emerging economies of China and India. more

Why Does Capital Protection Have to be so Hard? To protect and grow their wealth, Australian investors must make significant changes to their traditional approaches to portfolio construction. more