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23 August 2026

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Edition 24

  •   26 July 2013
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Welcome from Chris Cuffe

Good investing is not easy, and it's a life skill that even the most experienced never stop learning. It's made trickier by the human emotions involved. Ashley Owen starts a three part series on 'investing against the herd', focussing on the courage it takes to buy when everyone else is panicking.

Graham Hand takes a look at the five Australian equity fund managers who came bottom in one year performance in the 2012/2013 Mercer Survey, and advises investors to focus on longer term issues. My own investing approach is to ignore short term underperformance, once I have selected a talented fund manager.

Roger Montgomery completes his third instalment on value investing, this week on how much a company is worth. We attach a PDF of Roger's 'Value Investing Series' written exclusively for Cuffelinks. It's a very useful introduction to many aspects of investing.

While it is easy for all of us involved in superannuation to proselytise (love that word!) over it, David Bell points out that most people have other priorities and we need to focus on quality default options for them. And Warren Bird takes a bond manager's view of stock market volatility, and reminds us that equities are a long duration asset and prices should indeed react significantly to changes in earnings and discount rate assumptions.

Finally, we attach an article from The New York Times that I found especially intriguing, on the consequences of the share of GDP of financial services increasing from 2.8% in 1950 to 8.3% now. Who's producing all the 'stuff' we really need?

Chris

Latest posts from Cuffelinks, 26 Jul 2013, Edition 24

  • Investing against the herd. Part 1, Resisting emotion Ashley Owen
  • Persevering with your underperforming fund manager Graham Hand
  • What’s it worth? Roger Montgomery
  • Paternalism is not a dirty word David Bell
  • A fixed interest guy’s take on share market volatility Warren Bird

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  •   26 July 2013
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