Evergreen founder, Angela Ashton said that in recent months she had witnessed behaviour that some people might describe as “unethical”.
“What I am finding is that they are doing what they can to grow market share in a market which has decreased in size with the exit of the major banks,” she said.
SQM Research founder, Louis Christopher said that he had observed competitive pressure in a market that was already price-sensitive and in circumstances where few of the ratings houses could be said to cover the whole market.
“The research landscape has changed dramatically,” he said.
A senior licensee executive told
The independent consulting firm has launched the new tool to test the risk/reward characteristics of portfolios through its portfolio analytics system GreenVUE.
“Based on this theme, we see the continuation of growth assets outperforming defensive assets as cash rates stay low, governments continue to have aggressive bond purchasing programs (QE) and TINA (i.e. equities as the last man standing – There Is No Alternative).”
Economies with the greatest operating leverage were expected to benefit the most, and exporters such as Japan, emerging markets and Australia should outperform.
“Based on a benign cyclical recovery which assumes interest rates do not rise, we remain overweight credit but have taken some profits in the sector having benefitted from tightening spreads,” Ashton said.
“We have offset some of the risk of this overweight position with a continued preference towards higher credit rating (A and above) but would consider moving lower in grade to capture higher yields. Spreads are expected to contract further over the short to medium term.”
Green energy investments to accelerate in 2021 investordaily.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from investordaily.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Traditional fixed income sleeves will take an entirely different shape in the post-pandemic era, with the allocation of negative bond yields and cash investments hard to justify in portfolios according to Sunsuper head of asset allocation Andrew Fisher.
Speaking on a live panel at this morning’s
Professional Planner Researcher Forum 2020, Fisher explained how the fund’s allocation to fixed income is set to change as the economy drags itself out of a recession and markets tilt themselves back to a more rational setting.
“Roughly speaking, aggregate investment today is 60 per cent sovereign and 40 per cent investment grade credit,” Fisher said. “That’s what fixed income looked like.”