Tuesday 11th November 2008
The Financial Fortnight That Was
In This Issue
Quote for Consideration
Financial Topic Demystified - Passive Investing
Fascinating Financial Fact - The Trade Weighted Index
Market News
Cash - Safe But Not King
Eureka Report Articles
Other Websites of Interest
Cash Studies
Quick Links
 
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Greetings! 
 

Welcome to the latest edition of The Financial Fortnight That Was.

In this edition we take a look at the reasons why we favour passive investing, we take a look at the Prosperity Index, provide a summary of the movements in markets over the past fortnight and look at the case for being careful with only investing in cash.

 

We are also pleased to provide a link to a new online service comparing credit cards, loans and deposit accounts in the Australian market place as well as introducing a new section to the newsletter looking at case studies as requested by users of our website and this newsletter.

 

We hope that you find the material informative and relevant!

A Quote for Consideration 

"It's just not true that you can't beat the market. Every year about one-third of the fund managers do it. Of course, each year it is a different group."

Stovall, Robert , Investment Manager, 2002.

 
Financial Topic Demystified 
Passive Investing
 

A natural question to be asking, in the midst of what is one of the worst share market declines in history, is what investment approach is going to serve you best going forward.  Our firm remains committed to a passive approach to investing.  In this edition we want to spell out why we favour this approach.

 

The following is taken from our latest book - A Clear Direction - Being a Successful CEO of Your Life.

 

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In earlier chapters we looked at managed funds and saw that they were ineffective investment vehicles when compared to the simpler strategy of investing in index funds.  We also saw that passive funds that capture the small company and value company premiums discovered by Fama and French in the early 1990's allow passive investors to build portfolios that will outperform the simple index.

 

We looked at the importance of asset allocation and discussed the fact that asset allocation is the key driver of investment returns.  By using passive funds we are able to focus on building an asset allocation that suits the requirements of each investor.


This chapter sets out some advantages of using index and passive funds to build an investment portfolio.  Some of the issues have been touched on in previous parts of the book.  However it does not hurt to review them.  The six areas of advantage that index and passive funds have over active management include:

 

  • Tax Efficiency
  • Reduced Market Impact
  • Research Costs
  • Portfolio Asset Allocation Control
  • Diversification
  • Fees

 

As we saw in the early chapters of this book passive and index funds also have the important attribute of providing above average investment returns.  For this section of the book let's focus on the six points listed above, and consider these one at a time.

 

Tax Efficiency

 

Active management, regardless of whether it is done by a managed fund, stockbroker or an individual assumes that you are going to actively make investment decisions over time that will result in a higher than average portfolio performance.  These decisions mean that you will have to buy and sell investments. 

 

Each time you buy or sell an investment you have to pay capital gains tax, assuming that the investment has increased in value.  This applies even if you are an investor in a managed fund.  If the fund manager sells an investment at a profit you become liable to pay capital gains tax on this profit at the end of the financial year.

 

An interesting way to think about an unrealised capital gain that you have in an investment is that it is 'an interest free loan from the tax department'.  (An unrealised gain is where an investment has made a gain, however you have not yet sold the investment.  So the gain is described as 'unrealised'.)  As soon as you sell the investment you will have a tax obligation that will need to be paid.  However, if you never sell the investment then you will never have to pay that capital gain.

 

Therein lay the tax efficiency of passive investing.  If all the underlying investment manager is doing is tracking an index or subsection of the index, then there is little need for any trading.  Less trading means less realised capital gains, and more 'interest free loans from the tax department' in your underlying investment portfolio.

 

Using market figures from the Australian Stock Exchange website (www.asx.com.au), we calculated the total turnover for the Australian Stock Exchange in the 12 months to November 2005 as being 89.4% - great for the shareholders of the ASX who generate revenue every trade, but perhaps not so great for investors who have to pay tax on every profitable trade.   We actually find this level of share trading quite staggering.  A nearly 90% sharemarket turnover implies that every 13 or 14 months every single investment on the Australian stock exchange is traded.  Clearly index funds are not trading much at all, so the remaining market participants must have very high levels of trading in their portfolios.

 

Reduced Market Impact

 

A key problem with managing large sums of money in structures such as managed funds is that when a large fund manager wants to buy or sell an investment they end up moving the price of that investment against themselves.  For example, if a fund manager wanted to take a $40 million position in a listed company such as Leightons, their demand for shares would be pushing the price of the shares up as they bought in.  Similarly, when they decided to sell their stake in Leightons, their $40 million of shares would mean an oversupply of sellers and therefore push the price of the shares down.  This market impact effect sees the price of the shares increase as the fund manager buys and decrease as the fund manager sells, reducing the expected return from the investment.

 

Index funds have less of a problem in this regard.  Firstly, they are trading less than active market participants, so have fewer trades that can be affected by market impact.  Secondly they own all of the companies in an index, so they have their capital more evenly spread over all the investments in a market, rather than just the 30 or 40 that might be targeted by an active manager. 

 

Market impact costs, exacerbated by the high level of trading by fund managers, are largely avoided with index funds.

 

Research Costs

 

There are many levels of research services that offer advice to investors on which managed funds to invest in or which individual shares to buy.  These include services such as:

  • Portfolio management services that manage direct share portfolios for investors
  • Investment newsletters and stock picking sheets
  • Services that help select managed funds
  • Financial planners that help select managed funds for a commission payment

 

With index funds these services are no longer important.  An index fund is a simple 'commodity' that investors should feel confident choosing themselves based on the price of the fund.  All Australian share funds based on the ASX200 will be almost exactly the same, and investors should be confident simply choosing the cheapest fund.

 

Portfolio Asset Allocation Control

 

This book has presented significant evidence that asset allocation is the primary driver of portfolio performance.  Using index funds that mirror each asset class, and in the case of small companies and value companies passive funds that provide exposure to sub-asset classes, the focus can be taken away from the investment selection process and onto building a portfolio with an asset allocation that best suites each investor.

 

The adoption of index investment and passive investment is something that should empower individuals to be more closely involved in their own investment process.  The simplicity and effectiveness of indexing and passive investment means that investors are no longer compelled to pay high fees to the financial services industry for mediocre results.

 

Diversification

 

That indexing and passive investment allows a great deal of diversification is not hard to understand.  For example, an index fund based around the 200 largest stocks in the Australian share market will have 200 investments in its portfolio.  This minimises the impact that a fall in value of any one investment can have on your portfolio, the key advantage of diversification. 

 

Once you start to get into the world of active management it is almost a given that the portfolios formed will be less diversified than the underlying index.  However, active investment managers often choose to have well diversified portfolios.

 

Here is a fundamental problem for active management.  Let's call it the third paradox of active management.  The more diversified an investment portfolio becomes the more it will look like the underlying investment index, and the less it becomes able or likely to outperform the index.  The paradox is this: most active fund managers and investment managers exist because of their belief that they have 'skill' that can beat the relevant investment index; however they also believe in diversification as a risk management tool.  If active fund managers really believed in their skill at picking outperforming investments, surely they would only choose the best 10 - 15 investment ideas to hold in their portfolio!  If they have the ability to pick better performing investments, then why not just hold the very best of their ideas?  Why water these best ideas down with diversification?

 

Consider a large company fund invested from the top 200 companies in the Australian Stock Exchange.  Large investment managers are always touting the idea of 'diversification' as a way of managing risk and often hold portfolios that consist of the majority of the investments in an index.  Suddenly active management starts to look very much like very expensive index management, an issue addressed in a recent academic study.

 

Ross Miller, in his paper 'Measuring the True Cost of Active Management by Mutual Funds', sets out to identify how much the returns from mutual funds (US term for a managed funds), are a result of closet indexing and how much they are a result of active management unrelated to the index.  He then proportions a reasonable fee for the index fund management based on the Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund (0.18%) to find out the true cost of the actively managed portion of the fund.  That is, he assumes that the indexing investment management cost 0.18% for the portion of the fund managed this way, with the remaining management cost being attributed to the actively managed portion of the fund.  The results are very interesting.  For the 152 'large company' mutual funds that formed the sample, on average only 15.55% of the total funds were actively managed.  (ie the other 84.45% effectively mirrored the index return).  The average management expense ratio (MER) for the actively managed portion of the funds was 6.99%.  On average more than 96% of the variance in the returns of the fund was explained by movements in the index.  On average the 'value added' by the active management was negative 9%.  This is an investment loss of 2% on top of the fees of 6.99% apportioned to the actively managed component of the fund, clearly demonstrating that in this sample active management destroyed value.

 

On an overall basis the 152 mutual funds underperformed the index by an average of 1.5%.

 

Fees

 

Earlier in the chapter we looked at the research costs borne by investors and the market impact costs of investing through an actively managed fund.  It stands to reason that any active investment process will incur  higher level of fees as the underlying investment manager is really selling you their expertise. 

 

This expertise might be 'sold' to you in the form of the fees paid on a managed fund, the fees paid for a portfolio management service or the fees paid to a financial planner.

 

These fees add up, and it is not uncommon to find people paying in excess of 2% of the value of their portfolio in fees.  In fact, most active managed funds charge fees of around 1.8% to 2% per year.

 

Somehow a 2% fee doesn't sound too expensive.  However, a $4,000 annual fee on a portfolio valued at $200,000 starts to add up very quickly. 

 

Assessing fees in the world of active management is difficult, because of the assumption that the fund manager, portfolio manager or research company that you have chosen will outperform the market anyway.  If they can do better than average, then why worry about fees?  Once the reality that they cannot outperform sinks in, then the level of fees that have been paid becomes a very sad lesson.

 

Whereas the average fees for a managed fund are 1.8% to 2%, the fees on an index fund start at around 0.7%.  This level of fee is still higher than in the United States, where fees start at around 0.18%, and it is hoped that over time as the Australian index fund market matures and becomes less expensive the level of fees charged will fall.

 

Lower fees in index and passive funds are a function of the lack of research needed to run index or passive funds.  Simply holding all the investments in a market, in the proportion that they exist in the market, requires little research, ongoing monitoring or advanced decision making.

 

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How Do We Apply This?

 

We have looked at evidence that concludes that index and passive investing are effective.  This chapter presents the reasons behind that effectiveness.

 

These reasons lie at the core of the success of index and passive investing.  They are part of the compelling evidence for building investment portfolios using this approach.

 

Index and Passive funds are not only effective but inexpensive, extremely well diversified and tax effective.  It is no wonder that they form the basis of our investment approach!

 

For more information on this approach please take a look at our Building Portfolios page on our website

 

Fascinating Financial Fact

The 2008 Legatum Prosperity Index

 

Time for some good news!!  Australia has topped an index of the world's most prosperous nations.  The index is produced by Dubai-based investment group Legatum and measures 104 nations against levels of wealth, quality of life and life satisfaction.  As stated on the home page of the index - the purpose of the index is to "inquire into the nature of prosperity and how it is created."

 

Australia was followed by Austria and Finland in equal 2nd place with Germany, Singapore and the USA following in equal 4th.

 

The two key criteria used to measure prosperity are economic competitiveness and comparative liveability.  Specific comments from the report about Australia included:

"(Australia) has reinvented itself as a wealthy, service-oriented economy with good scores on liveability indicators, including health, charitable giving and effective governance,"

 

"Strong norms or civic participation, robust health, and plenty of leisure time contribute to the high liveability ranking."

 

Australia ranked particularly highly in good governance, education, high incomes and active community culture, but ranked lower in avoiding dependency on exports, moderate climate and investment through competitive markets.

 

The report provides some really interesting commentary on Australia.  Care must be taken in over-analysing the data as this is one view on how to define prosperity. However it does provide some comforting insights into our nation compared to others around the world.

 

Please take a look at the Legatum Prosperity Index website for more details.

 
Market News
 

ASX P/E Ratio and Dividend Yields

 

The P/E ratio is a common broad indicator of the price of shares.  It is a calculation of the price of shares compared to expected earnings.   A higher ratio indicates that share prices are more expensive.  The historical P/E ratio for the ASX has been between 14 & 15.  The dividend yield is the calculation of dividend payments divided by the market capitalisation of the company or index.  The historical average in Australia is around 4%.

 

As of October 4th the P/E ratio for the S&P/ASX 200 was 9.49.  The dividend yield was 5.88%.

 

Market Indices

Since our previous edition, all growth asset markets except Australian property have risen in value.  The S&P ASX200 Index has risen by 4.70% from 24th October to the 7th of November.  It is now down 39.46% from the same time last year and down 36.10% for the calendar year so far. 

 

The MSCI World Index - ex Australia, a measure of the global market, has risen 7.90% over the same period.  The index is down 38.77% from the same time last year and down 37.95% for the calendar year so far.

 

Emerging markets have also experienced positive movement with the MSCI Emerging Markets Index rising 14.98% since the 24th of October.  This index is down 49.21% from the same time last year and down 47.54% for the calendar year so far.

 

Listed property has continued to fall over the past fortnight.  Australian listed property trusts have fallen 0.86%.  The index is down 59.49% from the same time last year and also down 54.14% for the calendar year so far.

 

The S&P/Citigroup Global REIT - Ex Australia Index has risen over the fortnight by 6.89%.  This measure is down 12.93% from the same time last year and down 14.20% for the calendar year so far.

 

Exchange Rates

As of 4pm the 7th of November, the value of the Australian dollar is up 3.22% against the US Dollar at .6724.  It is now down 28.28% from the same time last year and down 23.73% for the calendar year so far.  Since October 24th the Aussie has risen 2.98% against the Trade Weighted Index, with the index now at 55.3.  This puts it down by 24.25% since the same time last year and down 19.51% for the calendar year so far.  (The Trade Weighted Index measures The Australian dollar against a basket of foreign currencies.)

 

General News

 

The Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia reduced the target cash rate a further 75 basis points last Tuesday with it now sitting at a rate of 5.25%.  The RBA's statement on monetary policy was released yesterday and reflected continued concerns about global economic growth levels and the expectation of a decline in inflation. 'the full statement can be found at - Statement on Monetary Policy.

 

The Australian Bureau of Statistic has released the latest employment data to the end of October 2008.  The figures show that unemployment has remained steady at a national level of 4.3%.  The participation rate has increased by 0.1% and employment has risen by 34,300 however this has been entirely sourced from an increase in part time workers with a small decrease in full time workers.

 

The ABS has also released the latest trade figures for the month ending September 2008 showing another trade surplus, 18% up on August.  They have also released the latest house price indexes for the eight Australian capital cities  for the September quarter 2008.  Hobart (0.7%) and Darwin (0.1%) saw the only increases with the largest falls in Brisbane (-3.3%) and Canberra (-2.5%).  For the year to the end of September, Perth (-4.1%) and Sydney (-0.4%) have seen falls with the largest increases in Adelaide (9.7%) and Melbourne (8.1%)


Cash - Safe But Not King
Scott's Financial Happenings Blog - Posted Monday 3 November
 

A natural reaction of late, especially since the strong falls on share markets across the world through October, has been a flight to safety namely cash.  The Australian government guarantee of cash deposits has solidified at least one area of the market.  This looks pretty attractive when most other asset values, even residential property based on data out today, are falling or have already fallen significantly.

 

Unfortunately, interest rates on these cash deposits are also falling.  Central banks around the world (whole heartedly supported by their respective governments) have cut interest rates in what has been viewed as a coordinated response to the looming downturn in the global economy. (Some would say slashed but I think emotive language such as this coming out of the media has been less than helpful and is in a small degree responsible for the scale of the falls on markets.  I'll get off my soap box now.)

 

The economic theory behind these moves is that through reducing interest rates, access to credit becomes more accessible and at the same time fewer resources are needed to pay back outstanding debt.  This in turn leads to more money being freed up by and for consumers and companies to spend in the real economy.  This in turn leads to higher levels of economic growth.  The economic term to explain this policy move is loosening monetary policy.  The sooner this is done the better as economic theory suggests the time lag between a cut in interest rates and for this to lead to a stimulation of the economy can be up to 18 months in duration.  Let's hope the impacts are felt sooner rather than later!!

 

These reductions in interest rates flow on to the rates paid by institutions for customers to loan them money by depositing their money with the bank or other financial institution.  These rates paid by banks and the like in Australia are still comparatively high compared to other developed parts of the world, thinking particularly of Japan and the USA, but are starting to fall.

 

As rates fall it makes the decision to hold cash that touch more difficult.   In a Eureka Report article published early in October - Yields the new king? - Scott Francis pointed out that the yields (or income) on Australian shares and listed property trusts are making these asset classes look a whole lot more attractive compared to cash deposit interest rates, especially when taking into consideration franking credit benefits. 

 

Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon provided a similar angle in her article published in the Sydney Morning Herald and dated the 26th of October - Cash is safe but it isn't king - where she in particular referred to the dividend yields of 8% or more being offered by the big four banks.  The big assumption here is that company dividend payments will at least remain steady.  There is some doubt as to this but so far the big banks, the part of the market which has suffered the most from the credit crisis so far, have at worst maintained dividends (ANZ) or in other cases continued to increase.  What this is telling investors is that if you buy shares in the banks now and held them like holding a term deposit, the income returns - the money coming into your bank account - would be 8% compared to what could soon be 6% or even in the 5% range for cash deposits after a few more RBA cuts.

 

Now of course the growth side of owning shares, taking the big 4 banks as an example, have been anything but stellar over the past 12 months.  If you might need to access the capital contained in a bank account or a share investments there is real risk in buying shares as the underlying investment may still fall in value.  But if you have a buy and hold strategy, for the long term, you would have to think that asset prices are pretty compelling at present levels.

 

A third piece of commentary on the problem with holding cash over the long terms is that inflation is a killer and eats into the returns from cash.  Warren Buffett makes this case in his article - Buy American. I am. - which I have referred to in a previous blog posting.  Growth assets, such as shares, also have a growth component and their income tends to grow over time, both providing a hedge against the impact of inflation.

 

As Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon suggests in the conclusion to her article - buying bank shares (or any shares) is not for the faint hearted but dipping the toes in and taking a conservative, measured approach through techniques such as dollar cost averaging might make some sense.  However in my view this should only be contemplated by buy and hold long term investors in consultation with their financial advisor and in relations to their current portfolio allocations, as the share market might just keep falling in value and/or dividends might not hold up over the coming year.

 

Regards,

Scott Keefer


Other blogs over the past fortnight have included:

 28th October

 

 
Click here to be directed to Scott's Financial Happenings Blog
 
Eureka Report Articles
 
Since our last edition Scott Francis has contributed another article to Alan Kohler's Eureka Report.  Click on the link below to be taken to this item:
 
5th November - Warren Buffett's textbook on investing ... and life - The Snowball, a biography of Warren Buffett, is a very readable account of his philosophies and contains lessons for all investors.
  

Click here to be forwarded to all of Scott's Eureka Report Articles

 
Other Websites of Interest
 

A new site that has been launched recently is - www.mozo.com.au

 

The site provides users the ability to search and compare credit cards, home loans, personal loans, car loans, savings accounts, term deposits and bank accounts.  It is well worth a look to check that you are getting a good deal or to help search for a better deal.  It also provides the options for users to provide their own reviews of products.

 

Case Studies
 

Over the past few months a number of users of our website have requested for us to include a section on case studies.  We are keen to be able to provide this for users of our website and email newsletter. 

 

To help develop this part of the website it would be great to receive subscriber requests as to particular questions they might have regarding their own financial situation.  Our plan would be to include a sample in each future edition of the newsletter along with copies on our website.  All respondents would remain totally anonymous with the understanding that any responses provided being general financial advice only.

 

If you were interested in getting involved please send through an email outlining your scenario.

 

To get the ball rolling we have included a fictional scenario taken from our most recent book - A Clear Direction - Being a Successful CEO of Your Life.


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Let us consider a 30 year old with $40,000 to invest along with $200 a week of surplus income.

 

Decision 1 - Defensive vs Growth Asset Allocation

 

The investor has a long time frame for their portfolio, planning to use it to help fund their retirement at age 55. 

 

They feel that they are comfortable with investment risk and, because they understand that it is a long term investment, they are prepared to accept a fall in value of their assets of around 35% were a 1987 style share market crash to recur. 

 

They have their life insurances and health insurances up to date, so there is little concern that they will need any funds from the portfolio to help meet their cost of living.  That said, they also have an adequate cash reserve and mentioned that having a further $5,000 to $10,000 to meet any unexpected costs made sense to them.

 

On the basis of this information it would appear that the portfolio could be heavily biased toward growth assets.  Keeping $5,000, or 12.5% of the portfolio in defensive investments will allow the investor to access this money if there is an unforeseen need for money.  If the ongoing contributions of $200 are invested in the same way, with 12.5% in defensive investments, then this $5,000 can be built to $10,000 to provide ready access to cash for the investor.

 

Let's review this decision against the three key drivers of the decision as to how much of the portfolio to allocate to defensive assets and how much to growth assets.

 

1/ The timeframe of the portfolio.  The timeframe is 25 years, a long timeframe, and is suited to investing in growth assets.

 

2/ The liquidity requirements.  Only $5,000 to $10,000 is required and only for an unexpected event.  Allocating 12.5% of the portfolio to defensive assets provides $5,000 if required, plus 12.5% of the ongoing $200 a week portfolio contributions will increase this above the $5,000.

 

3/ The risk tolerance and experience of the investor.  The investor has indicated that they are comfortable with their portfolio falling in value by 35% in the case of a 1987 style stock market crash.  The 12.5% of the portfolio invested in defensive assets will mean that a 35% fall in the value of growth assets will see the portfolio fall in value by about 30%. 

 

All in all allocating 12.5% of the portfolio to defensive assets and the remainder to growth assets is a reasonable decision.

 

Decision 2 - Within the Defensive Asset Allocation

 

The subtle differences between cash and fixed interest investments need to be considered in building the defensive asset allocation.  In this case the defensive asset allocation of the portfolio is only providing a pool of funds in the event of some sort of crisis.  On that basis, and given that the investor has some other cash outside of this investment portfolio, it is reasonable to invest this money into fixed interest investments - provided that they are high credit quality bonds without unreasonably long time periods to maturity.  At a practical level we would use the Dimensional Five-Year Diversified Fixed Interest Trust to meet this need.

 

Decision 3 - Within the Growth Asset Allocation

 

The first decision that the investor has to make relates to the weighting of Australian shares, international shares and listed property investments within the growth section of their portfolio.  In this case the investor was comfortable with the rationale for investing the growth assets:

 

45% Australian Shares

30% International Shares

25% Listed Property

 

The investor has read about the higher average returns possible from investing in small and value companies.  They also accept that these returns are the result of taking on more investment risk.  They feel that given their long investment horizon, they would like above average exposure to these sources of additional risk and reward.

 

After discussion it is agreed that their portfolio will have a significant exposure to value companies and small companies.

 

Within the Australian share portion of their portfolio they have chosen to have 40% of their assets in the index fund, 35% in value companies and 25% in small companies. 

 

Let us again be very clear about two factors here - 1/ this asset allocation provides a higher expected return and 2/ it also increases the risk of the portfolio: taking on small company and value company exposure increases both the expected return and risk of the portfolio.

 

Within the international shares portion of their portfolio the theme for more exposure to small companies, value companies and emerging markets results in an asset allocation that sees:

  • 35% of the international share exposure invested in an international index fund
  • 30% invested in international value companies
  • 20% invested in international small companies
  • 15% invested in international emerging markets

Within the listed property asset allocation the investor was comfortable having 67% exposure through an Australian listed property trust and 33% through international listed property trusts (hedged).

 

The table on the next page calculates the exposure to each asset class and sub asset class.  To work out the exposure for each asset class we start by multiplying the weighting of defensive vs growth by the asset class weighting by the sub asset class weighting.  For example, Australian index fund exposure is in the 87.5% growth allocation multiplied by the 45% Australian share exposure multiplied by the 40% sub asset allocation to the Australian index fund:

87.5% x 45% x 40% = 15.75%. 

 

We round this up to 16% because we don't want the figures to suggest that they are more precise than they really are.

 

Asset Allocation

Decision 1 - Asset Allocation

 

Decision 2 - Sub Asset Allocation

 

Overall % Exposure of Portfolio

Defensive Assets - 12.5% of portfolio

 

Cash

0% of defensive asset allocation

0%

 

 

Fixed Interest

100% of defensive asset allocation

12.5%

 

 

 

 

 

Growth Assets - 87.5% of portfolio

 

 

 

 

Australian Shares

45% of the growth portfolio

Australian Index Fund

40% of the Australian Share allocation

16%

 

 

Australian Value Comp.

35%

13.5%

 

 

Australian Small Comp.

25%

10%

 

 

 

 

 

Listed Property

25% of the growth portfolio

Australian Listed Property Trusts

67% of the listed property allocation

15%

 

 

International Listed Property Trusts

33%

7%

 

 

 

 

 

International Shares

30% of the growth portfolio

International Index Fund

35% of the international shares

9%

 

 

International Value Comp.

30%

8%

 

 

International Small Comp.

20%

5%

 

 

Emerging Markets

15%

4%

 

Please let us know if you have any feedback regarding these graphs by using the Request for More Information form to the right or via our User Voice feedback forum.

 
Requesting feedback 
   

We encourage subscribers to ask questions or make comments either directly by sending an email to our email address: financialfortnight@acleardirection.com.au or by engaging with our feedback site:

 

Financial Fortnight Feedback Forum

 

After clicking on the link you will be taken to our Financial Fortnight User Voice page.  On that page you will be able to provide suggestions or vote on suggestions that have been made by other subscribers.  By submitting an idea, you enable other users to view your idea and add their vote if they think it is worthwhile.  By casting your vote you are telling us whether you think the ideas are worthy and which ideas should be implemented first.

 
We welcome your feedback. 

 

We hope you have enjoyed reading the latest edition.  If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics please do not hesitate to get in contact.
 
Have a great fortnight!
 
Cheers,
The Two Scotts
 

The Financial Fortnight is a publication of A Clear Direction Financial Planning.  It contains general financial advice.  Readers should check this advice with a professional financial adviser before acting on any of the material contained in this email.

Scott Francis & Scott Keefer
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