International shares give locals a caning

From the AFR:

Since October last year the S&P/ASX 200 Index has gained 20.1 per cent, the United States S&P500 chalked up a 24.2 per cent return and the Euro Stoxx 50 is up 22.4 per cent.

According to the latest Mercer Investment Surveys, the median long-only Aussie shares manager returned 28.8 per cent in the year to October, an impressive achievement that would suggest fund managers are actually adding value. (One explanation for the outperformance may be that professional fund managers were more adept at avoiding the materials sector, which shrank 0.4 per cent in the past year.)

I said it then and I’ll say it now. Asset allocation is where you make your money and the falling Australian dollar is a no-brainer.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.