ETF boom and more wealth manager consolidation: The Contrarian's 2016 watchlist

2016 is finally upon us and here is my watchlist of things to keep an eye on within the investment space this year.

Top of my list is a plea for investors, advisers and DFMs alike to stop conspiring in the fiction they can add top-down asset allocation alpha to investors' portfolios by second guessing what impact big macro stuff - like the Fed rates decision - will have on returns. It is a pointless exercise, simply designed to punish the poor end investor with yet more transaction costs. By contrast, the boring fundamentals of asset classes really do matter. Andrew Lapthorne, head of quantitative equity research at Société Générale, only last week reminded his clients that in the end "fundamentals ma...