My bottom line for 2014 is that investors should be overweight global equities, underweight bonds. My biggest call? China's stockmarket could be the best performing.

A year ago, the world was salivating at the prospect of current account deficits in the developing world. Now, it's terrified. It's a terrific investment opportunity.

What's a very good long-term return from equity markets? What's fair? Take for example, Sigma Pharmaceuticals.

Efficient market theory claims you can't beat the market. Seductive as it is, this claim is incorrect, as research makes clear.

It's now time to start looking into alternatives to equities and bonds.

Three key shock risks will affect investors over the next decade, requiring a real difference in how we construct portfolios for retirement.

What makes this cycle so different? Five reasons - two are quite conventional, three are not. With proper economic policies, good times could lie ahead for the West.

The recent Jackson Hole Federal Reserve Conference was my 10th or 11th. I saw a fascinating disconnect between policymakers and the markets.

I'm used to being alone and against consensus. I believe the next decade is going to see the strongest level of global economic growth anyone today has seen.

A growing army of data scientists is mining patterns from our online activity. What are the implications for investment?

Indonesia's rise is one of the big stories of the Asian century, a future great power in Asia, just behind China and India. Indonesia may matter as much to Australia investors as China and the US.

All of the Conference sessions are building blocks for this session which helps delegates determine the key takeouts from the jam-packed program and actions delegates should take when building investor portfolios.

To build a truly diversified portfolio, you need to consider alternative investments as a third dimension alongside equities and fixed income.

Multi-asset absolute return investing offers more certainty of achieving the right outcome for clients and portfolios which are more sustainable through an investor’s life stages.

A fundamental-based approach to equity index investing can be a powerful way to reduce risk and improve performance over the investment lifecycle.

Top performing shares often display a high ROE, while poor performing shares display the reverse - making ROE a superior valuation input to PE ratios.

Australians have sought offshore diversification for years. The logical extension is to think more deeply about how to make offshore exposures complement local ones.

Agricultural equities is the 'third leg' of the global natural resources sector, joining energy and mining.

Real return funds with their more dynamic and go-anywhere structures are designed to be able to navigate through difficult and normal times. Can they really deliver?

If you're making investments you can't sell for 10 years, how do you go about selecting them? What lessons can be learned from history?

Simplifications taken in building Australian equity strategies may result in a portfolio that doesn't achieve what it's been designed to do, particularly in relation to income and volatility.

Allocating to countries with net wealth rather than net debt can lead to superior portfolio outcomes.

Under the lifecycle investing approach, real return outcomes are the most crucial measure of investment outcomes. But managing real return risk involves thinking differently about what risk really means in portfolios.

The first argument for investing in emerging markets is that's where the growth is. That said, high economic growth does not necessarily imply high stock returns.

China needs to embrace a stronger RMB - can it become the EM's Duetsche Mark - while Japan has embarked on a structurally weak yen, with profound implications for the rest of the world.

Reforms undertaken after the 1997 crisis drive the economic resilience of South East Asia today. Going forward, cyclical risks exist, but the region is set to do better still.

China has a very new type of leader. It is in the sphere of domestic politics and economic policy, in particular, that the extent of Xi's power and his policy preferences are unclear. The signals have been mixed.

For most, human capital is the most important source of financial capital and consumption through life. Nurturing, managing and protecting it is of paramount importance.

The world is going through a period of demographic shift that is without parallel in history - with six investment sectors advantaged.

At a practical level, how can we manage the risk of a client not maintaining their desired standard of living in retirement because they have lived longer than expected?

Recorded exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum PIMCO's Mohammed El-Erian discusses QE, and whether Australia can continue to escape the new normal.

The rule of thumb 4% pa safe withdrawal rate has proven fairly robust in ensuring most retirees don't run out of money, but it is coming under pressure in the current environment.

Managing sequencing risk - the risk of poor or negative returns near or around retirement age when a portfolio is at its largest and most vulnerable - is a critical component of lifecycle investing.

Is the strong performance of trend-following strategies a statistical fluke of the last few decades or a more robust phenomenon over a wide range of economic conditions?

Yield hungry investors would do well to take stock of their real investment objectives before making the headlong plunge into rapidly appreciating high yielding stocks and bonds.

Today's younger generation will become tomorrow's older generation. This predictability makes demographic shifts the single most powerful investment force of our time.

In constructing a portfolio to help clients meet their retirement goals, practitioners need to factor in the three most significant risks. A logical, valuation-based approach can help.

Baby boomer retirees need an investment approach that delivers the income they need and maintains the ability to meet their other objectives too.

Recorded exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum, Prof. Jack Gray explains why lifecycle investing concepts needs adaptation for Australia.

As investors move into decumulation, infrastructure can make a meaningful contribution to portfolios.

The traditional balanced fund for retirement investing resulted in a GFC return of -27%. It's time to put in place a new approach to plan for THE future as opposed to A future.

Australian investors can get better returns and increase the transparency of the companies they invest in, by including unlisted equity in portfolios.

Traditional unit trust structures can be disadvantageous to clients seeking higher income. New options better manage this from both an investment and structure perspective.

To fill the income void, investors need not look much further than Australia's liquid and ever-growing bond market which, unlike the majority of the developed world, still offers positive real rates.

Exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum, Nobel laureate Robert Merton discusses moving to an income goal for the retirement phase of an investor's lifecycle.

Lifecycle investing differs from more traditional approaches to financial planning in a number of important ways - but it is not without its challenges.

Recorded exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum Conference, Larry Fink argues that if we don't address the challenges of increasing longevity, it will be an expensive blessing.

Recorded exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum, Sonal Desai argues it's vital to distinguish between sources of negative bond returns.

Like people, economies and markets have lifecycles. This global macro economic, geopolitical and market scene setter looks at where we are in the macro lifecycle and implications for portfolios.

Recorded exclusively for PortfolioConstruction Forum, Alan Brown argues that what really matters to people is money-weighted rates of return.

Better quality portfolio construction must take a whole of life focus, considering accumulation and decumulation as equally important phases of one continuous process.

There will be a significant focus by investors in the future to address the mismatch between their risk profile and the risk level of their portfolios.

The Academy Spring Seminar 2012 featured four sessions: Believe it or not; Improving decision-making under uncertainty; Diversification - where it works (and where it doesn't); and The changing of the Chinese guard.