There are always a few types of business which can profit from a financial crisis, and it’s been interesting to watch those who hope to be among them subtly play their angles.
The bids for attention have sometimes come from opposite ends of the risk spectrum. For instance this month we had fixed income broker FIIG Securities herald ‘Government-guaranteed bank debt’ as the new asset class du jour, which will trade at a wider spread than traditional Australian Government bonds. FIIG said the guarantee “improved the creditworthiness” of the entire fixed income sector.
In more
exotic territory, Select Asset
Management loudly proclaimed an
October-to-October pre-tax return of
20.77 per cent for its Select Futures Fund
(that’s right, no minus sign) as evidence
that managed futures were a highly
liquid panacea that performed best in
moments of market stress. Likewise First
Quadrant, whose head derivatives trader
Steve Richey visited these shores last
month, was using the extremely high
price of volatility protection as a
springboard for the firm’s global TAA
fund in to
a seller of such protection in the
current market accounted for much of the
fund’s positive return last year.
Back in the more traditional world, van Eyk was telling anyone who’d listen that the times finally suited concentrated Australian equity managers, after years of disappointment thanks to their higher fees and inability to get an edge in bull markets. And guess who can help you select a couple of them?
Recessionary times are also a good time to appeal to the bargain hunters, and First State Super was among those doing just that, announcing that its average member fee of 0.4 per cent had seen it deemed
