Investors have good reason to be confused after a week that saw the seeds of a bearish rout in technology stocks, a bullish $2.1 billion bid for David Jones , a shock profit warning from a market darling Coca-Cola Amatil and a confidence building $400 million capital raising on the back of strong interim results from Bank of Queensland .

Boil down those two big negatives and two big positives and you have a strong argument in favour of looking at less conventional ways of generating excess returns in Australian equities.