If you wanted to get a sense of what is happening in the world, one needs only to look East. No, not to China, as one would typically hear these days, but just a little further East, to Japan. We all know what has happened to the Japanese economy over the past 20-odd years. Post bubble, it seems to have become the Rip van Winkle economy ‚ the only question is when it will finally wake up again? There are a number of issues that continue to plague the Japanese economic scene, and of course their demographics problems are well … Read more

As I mentioned, Atlantic was looking for interns to fill its Elite Students Program and work with Atlantic on specific research projects. The process was very successful and we received many strong applications. Finally we selected the following four students across a range of disciplines.

Willem Swiegers ‚ Masters Student in Economics (Stellenbosch)

Stephen Reid ‚ Master Student in Statistics (Stellenbosch)

Odwa Sihlobo ‚ Final Year Business Science in Actuarial Science (UCT)

Ilse Meier ‚ Honours Student in Management Accounting (Stellenbosch)

Congratulations to all of them. I am looking forward to working with all of you. I hope you enjoy the month at Atlantic

Albert

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Modelling

No, … Read more

Reading about the world’s most talented investors is both exciting and interesting. I am sure you read investment books to gain insight into how these brilliant minds operate and like me, hope that you pick up an investment tip that may help you in managing your own personal portfolio.

I particularly enjoy reading Malcolm Gladwell’s books. He is not an investment manager, but in his most recent book called ‘What The Dog Saw’ he includes a chapter entitled Blowing Up. It’s an article he wrote in April … Read more

This week the blog post is an article that was written by our CIO Arno Lawrenz. It was initially used in a publication by one of our clients (Glacier‚s Funds on Friday).

It is an exceptional read and I recommend you all take the time to do so…..

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Will it be with fondness that we one day look back at this time of crisis and remember how we all struggled to make sense of what was happening at the time? And yet, with the benefit of that hindsight, we will then know and see and comprehend the true nature of the crisis. … Read more

This week’s Funds on Friday was written by Arno Lawrenz, CIO of Atlantic Asset Management.
Will it be with fondness that we one day look back at this time of crisis and remember how we all struggled to make sense of what was happening at the time? And yet, with the benefit of that hindsight, we will then know and see and comprehend the true nature of the crisis. For surely a crisis understood will be a lesson learned? If only that would be true, then we would not have to resort to that time-honoured quote ascribed to Mark Twain of … Read more

Position: Office Manager ‚ Investment Management

Report to: Managing Director (MD) and Chief Investment Officer (CIO)

Overview: A growing specialist investment management company is looking for an intelligent, self-motivated and highly computer literate individual who will bring order to the highly diverse nature of the day-to-day office activities. This is about being more than just the team’s personal assistant. This position requires someone who is prepared to roll up their sleeves, use their initiative and get things done. This is not a job about having the right experience, but about having the right skills.

Although this job is within … Read more

We have had a tumultuous month at Atlantic. The global markets are busy digesting the Greek situation and local and foreign investors are quibbling over how South Africa should/will be affected ‚ especially given articles such as these (see pg 6).

http://www.tradingurus.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=18411

Internships

On another point we are looking for a couple of interns over the June break to help on a project we want to complete.

The first will be an Honours or Master Student in Statistics. The second a Computer Science Major with a solid background in VBA and Excel – the last, an economics/econometrics major also at Honours level or … Read more

On our recent round of presentations Arno Lawrenz used an excerpt from a book ‚The Value of Nothing‚Äù by Raj Patel to illustrate that it is not only Joe Soap and the average man or woman in the street that makes faulty assumptions about the world in formulating their expectations for future investment returns. Even the most highly respected financial practitioners make serious error of judgement. In this case it was Allan Greenspan and the US Federal Reserve whose assumptions about the banking system‚s soundness led to the death of many banks … Read more

This week‚s blog post is short in text, but long in content. I have inserted a link to our first ‚Atlantic Log‚Äù. This is a quarterly publication in which we aim to provide our clients with interesting reading material. As part of the investment team, I also contributed. In the piece I reference an earlier research article I wrote which is not currently available online ‚ a problem I now remedy.

Below you will find links to the referenced article, along with another research piece on post-retirement income.

My ‚Atlantic Log‚Äù article, along with the links focus exclusively on income strategies for … Read more

Looking back at the recent MPC decision it is important to recognize that we did not call the rate correctly, but even in hindsight we stand by our opinion (along with 95% of economists) that there should not have been a cut.

But even though we were wrong, we did not lose. In fact we gained quite handsomely from the decision. How did we manage this and why did we allocate assets as we did? In this blog we look at this and the practical effects of the interest rate cut.

In past blogs, articles and weeklies we have stated our view … Read more