All Diary of An Investor articles – Page 5
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Know your onions
I am back in the UK talking about our defined contribution (DC) scheme for the UK pension plan. We are discussing managers. I am relatively new to this DC world, but how different can it really be? My colleague from the Wasserdicht UK DC pension scheme is Joe and he says we should not worry because he knows his onions. People say the Dutch and English can be very alike but just to be clear: in Holland we are not focused on onions. He briefs me before we see two managers.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Every ash cloud has a silver lining
A short excursion to London at the end of April turned into a longer stay than I had expected. I had flown over on a Thursday morning for a day trip to make site visits to one or two of our investment managers, and to see our global investment consultant.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Understand everything
Apologies for returning to an important theme that is still running in Holland – that the definition of good governance is one where the pension fund boards must only approve investment in strategies they completely understand. Think about that for a moment. Now picture this
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Risk averse
So good-bye to the new normal (not even adieu) and hello again to old normal. Well, sort of. Marketing seems to be back on the agenda for all those asset managers with such wonderful alpha-producing track records, and of course for all the beta players too. But we are taking beta blockers here at Wasserdicht Pensioenfonds – it’s the A-class performance we want. Except in Germany.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Crikey!
“Oh dear, whoops and crikey”, are expressions used by the British to describe feelings when facing unusual situations. Well, I use them because we are being visited by Central Bank supervisor. These visits must evoke similar reactions from my peers in other European countries. Yet in Holland, no matter how the coverage ratio looks, we know we are all about to be told off.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Mental resolve
The beach at Scheveningen is broad and blustery at this time of year. The tempestuous, grey North Sea contrasts with the pale, wan light and the broad horizon, and I always find that a brisk walk with our Labrador-cross Dubbeltje brings about the right sort of mood to deliberate on the problems that are taking me the most time to resolve.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Fortune favours the brave
I am in Hong Kong. Not only am I visiting Chinese factories to taste the potential of Asian growth stocks, as my Asian equity manager and host explains, but I have also learned about what the new year might hold.
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Features
Over the worst of it?
Today we received seven e-mails and four telephone calls asking for meetings. Over the month we have seen 63 such requests. Times are changing and we see this as another indicator of the worst being over.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Simple train of thought
Yesterday we had an ‘aha’ moment. Our departmental assistant, Maria, wondered why we were all doing so much. “Equities, government bonds, corporate bonds, property, currency, commodities, hedge funds, I don’t know how you keep track all of this.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Job security
Off to Zurich for a day with my colleagues from around Europe. The English talk ‘brainstorming’ and think ‘outside the box’ but we on the continent want to avoid storms.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Art of designer dealing
The team is back from holiday and we look at the equity markets rise. Yet how many months ago were people talking about bath-shaped and U-shaped recoveries?
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Features
Crunch-time commodities
Oil prices have driven a commodities rally this spring as crude rose from its low of early 2009. How is this backdrop affecting investors’ attitudes towards commodities? This month’s Off The Record survey sampled pension funds’ attitude towards commodities.
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Features
Big is not beautiful
I have mixed views about big fund managers merging. It is not obvious what the benefits are for us at Wasserdicht Pensioenfonds. Our consultant has traditionally (and I think mistakenly) recommended big firms simply because they were big. But big to huge to utterly enormous is not a life cycle ...
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Nimble and flexible
The Amsterdam rain is falling against the windows as we see a market rally on the computer screens. All good timing for the conference I am attending with the theme ‘What now for Pension Funds?’
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Features
Regulatory Risk
Wasserdicht Pensionskasse in Frankfurt invited me to talk to them about risk. ‘You can tell us what you think we should do and what you think best practice should be in terms of risk management. And we have asked an EU regulator to talk to us. You will like him’.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Nelson’s telescope
A phone call from Alan, my Wasserdicht colleague in England. ‘Pieter, we all have been visited by the FSA and it is not good.’ ‘What is not good?’ ‘We have this thing in the UK called ‘governance’ and pension funds are being blamed for not exercising enough of it, and this inaction has helped fuel the financial turmoil and market downturn.’
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Consultants enter tiger’s lair
We had our yearly get-together last week. All the investment directors of Wasserdicht Pension Funds descended on Amsterdam. Yoshi from Tokyo, Hans from Frankfurt, Jim from Boston, Geert from Jo’Burg and Clive from London.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Alternative woes
We are evaluating - constantly - our exposure to alternatives. How innocuous that word ‘alternative’ sounds; it does not do justice to the magnitude of actual and potential losses. It is not because opportunities are not there, but it is the continuing outflows that threaten us and our managers. James, ...
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