40 Year Anniversary
1 January 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of Gilkison Investments. We are very proud of the achievement and wish to acknowledge, with gratitude, that this would not have been possible without our clients providing us with the opportunity to be of service.
Name change
To mark the occasion, we made the decision to alter our company name slightly, from Gilkison Investments to Gilkison Group. Although investment advice is a key component of what we deliver, we have long since thought the company name was dated and, in many respects, misrepresents the contemporary nature of our work. We have also grown as a team over the years and feel the name to Gilkison Group far more accurately represents our belief in Gilkison being an inclusive collective of all stakeholders; you and your family, each of our team and their families, the broader community and all other stakeholders.
Rest assured that this is not an expression of some delusion of grandeur; our purpose remains to be of service and help our clients enjoy a rich experience of life.
New website
As part of the change, we have relaunched our website under the new address of www.gilkisongroup.com. We will use the new website as a tool to deliver regular, alternative content to the everyday barrage pumped out by mainstream media and also provide a reference point for our existing group of clients and their families.
To commence this process, we have written below about the 2018 calendar year, including performance of asset classes and draw on comments from the first of our posts on the new website. Based around the presentation of capital market returns and how this can influence investors, the post is entitled “Investing: Complicated or Complex?” and can be found on the Articles page of our website.
2018 year comments
In the world of financial services in Australia, 2018 has been dominated by the many revelations from the Hayne Royal Commission into Banking and Financial Services. Unfortunately, the misgivings revealed have been taking place for a very long time and has impacted the life savings of countless Australians.
Early in 2019, recommendations from the royal commission will be delivered. Based on the hearings through 2018, the recommendations are sure to leave the government, regulator and especially the large corporates at the centre of the findings with much to be done through 2019 and beyond.
Capital markets were volatile through 2018 with many share markets around the world delivering their first negative return since 2011. Based on significant falls in the last quarter of 2018 and in particular through December, it was only very conservative portfolios that delivered a positive for the year.
Interest rates remained at record lows in Australia, though as we have expected and communicated, the heightened share market volatility saw the returns from high quality fixed interest investments (e.g. Bonds) increase significantly in the last part of 2018.
As we have become accustomed to in recent times, there was a wave of media reports about the negativity of share markets in the lead up to Christmas. Over the past decade, the news cycle has reduced so dramatically that a single news agency can publish contradictory reports within the same day. We saw evidence of that through the later part of December.
If we pick apart the good from the not so good, the flow of information from mainstream media can be invaluable. Filtering through the noise is still the key. Understanding that news articles are intended to elicit a response and recognising the way information is reported is crafted by professionals to achieve that result is a good start.
In our first article for the 2019 year on our new website, we address this particular point. As mentioned above, the article is entitled “Investing: Complicated or Complex?” and can be found on the Articles page of our website. For those of you who do not use the internet and would like a copy of the article, please do let us know.
The conclusion of the article is that there is no one ‘right’ answer when it comes to the investment of your capital. Using an evidence based approach to build a portfolio of investments can objectivise a complicated topic. At the same time, we live in a complex world, which to us emphasises the value of having a Financial Adviser who knows you well to help guide your choices throughout the course of your life.
We are grateful to have you as our client and wish you all the very best for the year ahead.