Q1 2014

Are RAs deserving of bad publicity? by Denver Keswell, Senior legal advisor

Other than the obvious merits of providing an income upon retirement, retirement annuities (RAs) are also one of the most tax efficient investments. Over the last few years RAs have received some bad publicity for the way they are administered. If you unpack the criticism, however, you will see that much of it is based on how a company structures its RA product as opposed to how a generic RA works.

Time to read: 4 min

Income at retirement: What are the options? by Vuyolwethu Nogantshi

During his 2012 budget speech, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan announced proposals to reform the retirement industry, highlighting annuitisation as one of the focus areas. National Treasury released technical discussion papers for public comment, and the paper titled “Enabling a better income in retirement” focused specifically on annuities.

Time to read: 3 min

Is it too late to buy into equities? by Seugnet de Villiers and Amy Jansen

We have come a long way since stock markets reached their crisis level lows in early March 2009. In fact, since those dark days, the JSE Top 40 has delivered a total return of 200 percent, whilst the MSCI All Country World Index has been almost as impressive, advancing 150 percent (both measured in US dollar terms from their lows through to end October 2013).

Time to read: 5 min

Picking winning funds: 3 steps to improve y... by

Picking winning funds is easy… after the fact. Identifying those winners in advance is a lot more difficult. Even professionals (myself included) often get it wrong. That’s because there are no sure things in the investment world.

Time to read: 7 min

Discovery: Proving the power of incentives by Wilhelm Hertzog, RECM

Discovery is a stock which has featured as a holding in the Nedgroup Investments Managed Fund for much of the past six years, and for most of this time it was one of the top holdings in the fund. The stock has delivered very good absolute and relative returns over this time period, beating the market by a wide margin.

Time to read: 6 min

The tyranny of the benchmark by Andrew Headley

As markets rise there is a tendency for investors to assess their investment manager against a selected index benchmark over increasingly short time frames.

Time to read: 5 min

Entrepreneur Fund: Reflections on the last ... by Anthony Sedgwick

As we approach the 10 year anniversary of our appointment as manager of the Nedgroup Investments Entrepreneur Fund (a fund that invests outside of the Top 40 largest shares in the All Share Index), it seemed appropriate to share a few thoughts on how the fund has evolved, as well as some of the investment lessons learned along the way.