Here we all were talking about a return to simplicity in the financial services industry, and along comes another piece of jargon.
Justin Pascoe of VFMC will probably take the blame for introducing “stractical” to the industry, during his addresses to the Investment Management Consultants Association conferences in Sydney and Melbourne last December.
As the uninitiated can probably work out, a “stractical” position refers to one that’s in place for too long to be called ‘tactical’, but is never enshrined in policy the way a ‘strategic’ bet would be.
Pascoe used the portmanteau to describe VFMC’s shorting of the Aussie dollar at around 90 US cents, and his closing out of an emerging markets overweight late last year.
We remember when Michael Block, now CIO at FuturePlus, described the same kind of thing as “MAA” (medium-term asset allocation). Not as clever, but not as McKinsey-esque, either.
