Welcome to Auscap’s January 2025 Newsletter titled Confusing Volatility With Risk And The Move To Private Markets
Quite rightly, there is a big focus on risk-adjusted returns in financial markets. A prospective 10% return which requires bearing significant risk can be correctly considered inferior to an 8% prospective return achieved taking very little risk. The variance in prospective return and the potential risk to capital in the former case has likely been insufficiently compensated through the additional return offered. The problem is, how is risk to be measured and compared. As William Bruce Cameron wrote, “Not everything that can be counted counts. And not everything that counts can be counted.” There is no accurate way to measure risk, only substitutes. These substitutes can be useful guides, but they have limitations. In this newsletter we discuss this and the move to private markets, as well as detail the performance and portfolio positioning of the Auscap Funds in December 2024.