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Home / Author: Duncan Burns

Duncan Burns

The simplicity of this investing method hides its power

Despite the perception that successful investors nimbly navigate each zig and zag in the market, the evidence suggests otherwise. This approach can help an investor avoid self-harming their returns.

Duncan Burns
13 August 2025
8

Blending active and passive into a winning portfolio

When looking at long-term equity index charts, it’s easy to forget the individual stocks underpinning the indices don’t move as a unified block. This has important implications for how you try to extract returns from markets.

Duncan Burns
6 December 2023
5

Does currency hedging provide an edge?

A growing number of Australians are choosing to hedge their international equity exposures. Currency movements are difficult to predict so investors should treat currency hedging as a way to manage risk, not to add return.

Duncan Burns
4 October 2023
2

Five reasons to hold your investment nerve

Financial markets have been volatile of late, and it's tempting for investors to seek shelter in cash for some or all of their nest egg. While that may seem a sensible strategy, it can also be a costly one.

Duncan Burns
21 June 2023
2

What happens when an index is rebalanced?

An index rebalance occurs when the composition of an index changes. Fund managers must buy and sell stocks to match the rebalanced index and to achieve their index-tracking objective, but there are consequences.

Duncan Burns
28 September 2022
5

Choosing an index fund is more than just the expense ratio

Popular belief is that all index funds are the same, but it pays to follow this framework, which shows there is more to consider than the cheapest management cost. Replicating an index is not easy.

Duncan Burns
3 June 2020
6

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Latest Updates

The ultimate superannuation EOFY checklist 2026

Here is a checklist of 28 important issues you should address before June 30 to ensure your SMSF or other super fund is in order and that you are making the most of the strategies available.

Liam Shorte
29 April 2026
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Retirement

Two months into retirement

A retirement researcher's take on retirement and her focus on each of her six resource buckets to stay engaged during the transition and beyond.

Dr Joanne Earl
29 April 2026
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Superannuation

Markets have always delivered for super fund members. What if they don’t?

What happens if market resilience in the face of ongoing geopolitical tensions ends? Potential decade-long market weakness shows the need for contingency planning.

David Bell, Geoff Warren
29 April 2026

Retirement

We tend to spend less in retirement …

Studies show that a drop in expenditure during retirement leads to a happier retirement. But when costs ramp up again later in life, it's a guaranteed income that makes spending more hurt less.

Don Ezra
29 April 2026
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Can you value a share just using dividends?

A cow for her milk, a stock for her dividends. Investors are too quick to dismiss this valuation technique.

Mark LaMonica CFA
29 April 2026
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Property

The 25-year property trust default is being questioned

The 33% CGT discount rate being floated isn’t random. It sits at the structural break-even between trust and company for the multi-property cohort. That’s driving the conversation we’re hearing now.

Nadine Connell
29 April 2026

Investment strategies

Are active managers bringing a knife to a gunfight?

How passive investing has permanently changed market structure — and why sophisticated tools are now the price of survival.

Jason Teh
29 April 2026
1

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