10 Sep 2018

We highlight the below points in our attached newsletter: Equity investors expect volatility European active management hold a low success rate US Fund Flows:  passive continues to grow market share 201809 Monthly Newsletter...

10 Aug 2018

We highlight the below points in our attached newsletter: The strong $ and strong US equity market trend continued in August Fund Flows: passive continues to increase market share 201808 Monthly Newsletter...

10 Jul 2018

We highlight the below points in our attached newsletter: US mutual fund and ETF asset flows highlights the cautious sentiment of investors Beware of Market Timing Investors are rewarded for staying invested 201807 Monthly Newsletter...

12 Aug 2016

INVESTMENT LESSONS Lesson 2 - Taxes and Costs The next investment lesson is to keep taxes and costs down. Your investments grow from compounding as we have seen but they also reduce with tax and costs. The new tax free savings account (introduced last year) allows you to save tax free. How beneficial is this? There are different tax charges on investment returns and there are ma...

26 Jul 2016

INVESTMENT LESSONS Lesson 1 - Compounding If you’re in your 20s, 30s or 40s, you should be investing with a long-term plan.  This is a strange concept in our modern world where we are becoming more and more focused on the short-term - on instant results. But this long-term focus is critical. Not only because we are living longer so need to save for longer to fund our longer reti...

01 Apr 2016

South Africans can now invest in tax free savings accounts (TFSA). These simple and easy-to-understand products were introduced last year. They offer full disclosure on fees and have no penalties on cash-out. These are great for all of us and will hopefully create a culture of savings and attract first-time investors. The TFSA can house different investment types, from guaranteed and ...

27 Feb 2016

There is an ongoing debate within the investment industry. Do you choose indexed (passive) investing or do you choose active investing? Indexed investing seeks to replicate a basket of shares, such as the 40 largest shares on the JSE. So you don't pick which shares to buy - you buy all the shares specified in the basket (called an index). The alternative is called active investing whe...

02 Feb 2016

The conventional wisdom is that in these times of market turbulence, you need active management. Here is an interesting interview with the CEO of Vanguard, Bill McNabb, who dispels this. Vanguard continued to see strong inflows into its index funds and ETFs in January. The bottom line is that a low-cost investment strategy typically beats the vast majority of comparable active strategie...

23 Mar 2015

At Stylo, we use low-cost cost index tracking strategies to build and manage global portfolios for our clients. This FT article refers to large active managers as “perennially underperforming the stock market after fees”....

05 Nov 2014

We live in interesting times. Who would have thought back in the 1990s or even as recently as 2007 (before the global financial crisis) that investors would be happy with a paltry 0-2% yield on the money they lend to governments? And yet yields on many European Government Bonds are at (or very close to) their lowest levels ever (http://yhoo.it/1t9AeaG) . German 10 year bonds are offer...