Trang Nguyen is a Vietnamese-born, Australian-educated client-relationship manager who works for DIP funds management in Melbourne. Trang is responsible for managing the investment accounts of a stocks and property as well as bonds. She also oversees a small team of client advisers and plays a role in the company’s wider educational activities.
Trang and her staff had spent a number of years explaining the benefits of diversification to her risk-averse client. Including concept and of international diversification and principle of asset allocation. However, despite this, the DIP #2 Fund fell about 25% in 2008 and has not recovered all of this ground since then. Quite a few of DIP’s client were very upset at this fall, saying to her and her fellow workers things like: We followed your advice but look where it has got us. What benefit is there in being diversified? We might as well have stayed in Australian share market. Other clients have suggested pulling their money out of the #2 Fund and investing in bonds, citing EQT PIMCO’s successful performance from 2008 to 2010.
You recently joined DIP as a graduate trainee and you have been assigned to work the next three months with Trang, as part of your initial job-rotation schedule. Trang’s first task for you is to prepare a brief memo that can be circulated to all client advisers and which can be used to respond to clients who are upset. The memo should include suitable data to support the following points:
1. Would investors have benefited from staying with the Australian share market through 2008 instead of being in the DIP #2 Fund?
2. Should clients transfer their money to a bond Fund at this point in time?
3. Does international diversification still make sense in the post-GFC era?
4. What is the fundamental risk exposure of a global investment fund?
Q1).There is no guarantee that the investors will gain profit or make lost if chose to stay in Australian share market through 2008 instead of being in the DIP#2Fund. However, the concerning point is no investment could be guaranteed with good return. That is why high return always comes with high risk and vice versa. Many financials say “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” that is if you invest all in company A, if company A go out of business, there go all your money as well. But if you invest in many where else, the lost will not effect as much.
Diversification is a widely known to be one of the best tool to help investors. Even though it cannot ensure 100% gain or guarantee against lost but diversification will provide the potential to improve returns for that level of risk and reaching long-range financial goals. As shown in the picture below, the more you diversify your investment (number of share in portfolio) the smaller risk you will have.