The global financial crisis has served to teach the financial market some important lessons that should not soon be forgotten, according to Bank of New York Mellon Asset Management senior market strategist Robert Jaeger.
Jaeger, who has been visiting Australia this month, told Super Review that investors had plenty to learn from the meltdown and, in doing so, could improve their future portfolio construction.
He drew on the words of economist John Maynard Keynes in suggesting that markets can remain irrational longer than investors can remain solvent and added that liquidity had also been proved to be key, even for long-term investors.
Jaeger said the reality that had emerged was that if you did not have short-term liquidity, you could not be an effective long-term investor because you could not buy during panics and you might even become a forced seller.
“Even sovereign wealth funds, which have long time horizons and no specific spending requirements, should have ‘emergency funds’ to hand,” he suggested.
Jaeger also suggested that many of the disasters to emerge from the global meltdown had come from what had been regarded as “conservative investing” in circumstances where AAA bonds had blown up and securities lending programs had run into difficulties.
He said the current environment had created extraordinary investment opportunities but investors had to be aware that there was still no such thing as a free lunch and that the unpredictability of the market had still not gone away.
Jim Chalmers has defended changes to the Future Fund’s mandate, referring to himself as a “big supporter” of the sovereign wealth fund, amid fierce opposition from the Coalition, which has pledged to reverse any changes if it wins next year’s election.
In a new review of the country’s largest fund, a research house says it’s well placed to deliver attractive returns despite challenges.
Chant West analysis suggests super could be well placed to deliver a double-digit result by the end of the calendar year.
Specific valuation decisions made by the $88 billion fund at the beginning of the pandemic were “not adequate for the deteriorating market conditions”, according to the prudential regulator.