After a punishing innings for her flagship ETF, ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood thinks investors need to stop living in the 70s. This time next year the Fed will be “running in the opposite direction” and deflation will dominate the market, she says.
The recent re-embrace of active equity management by Australia’s sovereign wealth fund may herald a shift in the active-versus-passive debate, industry leaders said, as market volatility prompts greater dispersion and allows active management – at the right price – to prove its worth.
The meltdown of Silicon Valley Bank is “an early step” towards a more rational market environment, according to Howard Marks, but new problems might arise from bank exposure to commercial real estate.
The Paris-aligned benchmarks that an increasing number of global investors now subscribe to disincentivise activities that might actually help the energy transition, according to index provider Scientific Beta.
The changes to the Your Future Your Super performance test are an improvement, according to Willis Towers Watson. But the application of the test to trustee-directed products is probably more of a negative than a positive, and some benchmarks remain inflexible.
Investors holding out for a monetary policy hero will have to keep holding out. And as regulators put out spot fires in the global banking system, they’ll need to reckon with the new behemoths they’ve made.
Systemic risk is difficult for investors to grasp because it’s no big deal – until it is. And unless investors adopt a “vastly different” mindset about pricing, it’s going to get a lot worse.
As a forty-year long bull run fuelled by cheap money screams to a stop, markets are at an inflection point. This time really could be different.
Overseas, Australia’s biggest super fund is a small fish in a massive pond. To achieve the scale it wants it will have to dive deeper into the private markets, meeting stiff competition from its North American peers along the way.
A new CEO should help convince investors that Magellan can be turned around. But proving they need Magellan, not an index, will be harder.
