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Patience in Asia

05 December 2013

Investing in a multitude of markets and companies as we do within the Templeton Emerging Markets Group means that at any given point in time it may appear to some that they are underperforming or outperforming any particular benchmark index or market. Such is the nature of global financial markets. Of course, we’d like all of our investments to go straight up, but at the same time continually like to find new bargains for investors. So having all stocks in a given market all go up is not necessarily a good thing when you are looking for values. In addition, we recognize that sometimes conviction is required to weather short-term setbacks when we believe a long-term investment case can be made for a particular stock. We embrace those setbacks as opportunities to snap up potential bargains. Unfortunately, many investors today seem to lack patience, and may be losing patience with some emerging markets in Asia this year— China is perhaps the largest case-in-point.

Changing life circumstances, changing investment needs

26 November 2013

“Age is an issue of mind over matter,” Mark Twain once declared. “If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

The truth about inflation, fees and your investment return

20 November 2013

The retirement fund industry sold their clients the dream of becoming a multi-millionaire by simply investing 15% of their monthly income into a high equity fund for the next forty years, and with such a fund delivering a compound return of 16.5% per annum over the last 40 years, this actually seems possible. However, there is one little catch – the return is quoted on gross investment returns and fails to include the impact of fees and inflation.

No Safe Havens

19 November 2013

During tumultuous market spells, it would be nice to believe that risk-free investments exist, and that government debt is a risk-free harbour. After all, governments don’t really go bust, do they? But John Beck, senior vice president and co-director of our International Bond Group, Franklin Templeton Fixed Income Group®, argues there are no safe havens. Read on for his explanation for why he takes facts over comfortable fictions.

quick poll

Question

Do you think short-term insurance broking will survive the AI plus humanoid robotics age?

Answer

Human first always Not a chance Possibly maybe Yes, but reimagined

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