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 ...

15 Mar 2016

In the latest Financial Analysts Journal, John Bogle the Founder and Former CEO of Vanguard, describes the staggering triumph of indexing in the US: Index assets grew from $11m in 1975 to $4trn today. Indexed market share in equity mutual funds (unit trusts) have grown from 4% in 1994 to 34% in 2015. ETF equity assets have grown to $1.7trn. Mr Bogle, is critical of investors i...

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...

25 Aug 2014

Recently, William Bernstein, published a great short book on investment strategy. He advocates a simple low-cost index tracking strategy with fixed splits between equities and bonds and annual re-balancing. Our Stylo portfolios are consistent with both these precepts....

25 Aug 2014

We love simple and efficient investment solutions. That’s why we love exchange traded funds – or ETFs. They are the investment building blocks within the Stylo portfolios.  An ETF is an investment fund traded on a stock exchange; so with a single trade you get exposure to the investment fund.