Brendan Gunn

Invast Australia has announced the launch of its unique thematic investing product, which enables investors to select from a range of professionally constructed thematic portfolios across local and international stocks exchanges and capitalise on key trends, with its ‘Diversified Asset Bearish’ strategy up an impressive 77.2% over the past year.

The PortfolioInvestor platform offers clients an innovative means to take advantage of key market themes, in one click, by strategically investing in professionally constructed portfolios of Direct Market Access (DMA) CFDs over highly liquid global shares and ETFs, said Invast CEO Brendan Gunn.

“These portfolios consist of a collection of stocks relating to a specific market theme or trend. Some of the popular themes among investors include ‘Ageing Population Australia’ and ‘US Cyber Security’. Other themes include ‘Bullish Australian Property’,  ‘Iconic Australian Brands” and ‘Takeover Targets Australia’,” said Mr Gunn. “These are unique and well researched themes. The ‘Diversified Asset Bearish’ strategy, for example, enables investors to benefit from falling markets and the numbers speak for themselves – that strategy is up an amazing 77.2% over the past year (to September 4, 2015) and 9.5% higher over the past month*.

“The strategy is unique in that it is composed of just four securities – all short positions on major diversified markets. The best performer has been the short position on the oil price, up an amazing 192.4% over the past year,” Mr Gunn said.

“The PortfolioInvestor platform currently has around 30 investment themes which investors can chose from. Each of these themes is carefully considered, measured and analysed by our investment committee and diversified enough to ensure that one single stock cannot have a large impact on overall performance. A portfolio of themes further adds to diversification,” said Mr Gunn.

“As the ‘Diversified Asset Bearish’ strategy has shown, investors can benefit from rising and falling markets, and this strategy could provide a handy hedge as part of a very well diversified portfolio, especially given the likelihood of further stock market volatility ahead,” said Mr Gunn.

Invast Australia is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Invast Securities, which is listed in Japan.  The company is expanding its local presence, with a strong focus on sophisticated clients and institutional relationships. Each of its themed portfolios, known as Strategic Investment Portfolios (SIPs), are constructed by the Invast Investment Committee, comprising some of the most distinguished multi-asset investment experts in the industry.

“With PortfolioInvestor, we have taken the hard work out of selecting and investing in individual stocks so investors you can easily act and take advantage of economic trends,” said Mr Gunn. “Research analysts explore key trends, ideas and global market themes to identify the best opportunities for submission to the Investment Committee, who then decide on the portfolio weighting to maximise exposure to the specific theme. The innovative platform has already attracted much interest since being offered to investors and Invast is now ready to disrupt the investment and finance sector,” said Mr Gunn.

* Past performance is not indicative of future performance. The calculation of the returns is based on the performance of the actual underlying securities, in accordance with the weighting envisaged by the portfolio. These performances exclude financing and commission costs.

]]>

Brendan Gunn

Invast Australia has announced the launch of its unique thematic investing product, which enables investors to select from a range of professionally constructed thematic portfolios across local and international stocks exchanges and capitalise on key trends, with its ‘Diversified Asset Bearish’ strategy up an impressive 77.2% over the past year.

The PortfolioInvestor platform offers clients an innovative means to take advantage of key market themes, in one click, by strategically investing in professionally constructed portfolios of Direct Market Access (DMA) CFDs over highly liquid global shares and ETFs, said Invast CEO Brendan Gunn.

“These portfolios consist of a collection of stocks relating to a specific market theme or trend. Some of the popular themes among investors include ‘Ageing Population Australia’ and ‘US Cyber Security’. Other themes include ‘Bullish Australian Property’,  ‘Iconic Australian Brands” and ‘Takeover Targets Australia’,” said Mr Gunn. “These are unique and well researched themes. The ‘Diversified Asset Bearish’ strategy, for example, enables investors to benefit from falling markets and the numbers speak for themselves – that strategy is up an amazing 77.2% over the past year (to September 4, 2015) and 9.5% higher over the past month*.

“The strategy is unique in that it is composed of just four securities – all short positions on major diversified markets. The best performer has been the short position on the oil price, up an amazing 192.4% over the past year,” Mr Gunn said.

“The PortfolioInvestor platform currently has around 30 investment themes which investors can chose from. Each of these themes is carefully considered, measured and analysed by our investment committee and diversified enough to ensure that one single stock cannot have a large impact on overall performance. A portfolio of themes further adds to diversification,” said Mr Gunn.

“As the ‘Diversified Asset Bearish’ strategy has shown, investors can benefit from rising and falling markets, and this strategy could provide a handy hedge as part of a very well diversified portfolio, especially given the likelihood of further stock market volatility ahead,” said Mr Gunn.

Invast Australia is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Invast Securities, which is listed in Japan.  The company is expanding its local presence, with a strong focus on sophisticated clients and institutional relationships. Each of its themed portfolios, known as Strategic Investment Portfolios (SIPs), are constructed by the Invast Investment Committee, comprising some of the most distinguished multi-asset investment experts in the industry.

“With PortfolioInvestor, we have taken the hard work out of selecting and investing in individual stocks so investors you can easily act and take advantage of economic trends,” said Mr Gunn. “Research analysts explore key trends, ideas and global market themes to identify the best opportunities for submission to the Investment Committee, who then decide on the portfolio weighting to maximise exposure to the specific theme. The innovative platform has already attracted much interest since being offered to investors and Invast is now ready to disrupt the investment and finance sector,” said Mr Gunn.

* Past performance is not indicative of future performance. The calculation of the returns is based on the performance of the actual underlying securities, in accordance with the weighting envisaged by the portfolio. These performances exclude financing and commission costs.

The post INVAST Australia launches unique thematic investing product appeared first on AdviserVoice.

As the first step in the expansion, INVAST has recruited Brendan Gunn and Andrew Taylor as CEO and COO respectively.

CEO Brendan Gunn has more than six years in foreign exchange and CFD broking and was responsible for growing GFT Markets (Sydney) to the become one of the largest CFD and Forex trading houses in Asia Pacific.   Mr Gunn will be responsible for growing the business locally and developing the model to take the business to other markets.

COO Andrew Taylor has in excess of 20 years experience, also most recently with GFT Markets.  Mr Taylor’s financial markets knowledge crosses borders and asset classes, with a strong focus on investment and debt management for both business and individuals.  Mr Taylor will be responsible for managing the business operations including staff recruitment, IT, compliance, dealing and product development. 
 
Mr Gunn said it was the goal of INVAST to provide education and develop long-term relationships with its clients.

“The 50 plus year Japanese heritage of INVAST has built a culture focused on precision, integrity and high standards.  We are very excited to be leading the initiative to share INVAST’s expertise and vision with other markets.   This office is the first outside of Japan and it will provide a gateway to Asia and build a blueprint for global expansion,” he said.

Mr Gunn said a focus on relationships, educating clients on risk management techniques were central objectives of INVAST, culminating in a better trading experience.

Our focus with all our clients, be they SMSF investors, professional or simply brand new traders, is to provide education, risk management and help them become better traders.  We seek to match the right product with the right level of trader.  We also design and build a number of innovative products with inbuilt risk management tools, which we believe will be market firsts in Australia. ”

Mr Gunn said INVAST also provided partnership arrangements for institutional investors and financial advisers.

Mr Gunn said Invast would be operational in Australia by Q3 this year.