Goodbye 2018, it's been a blast: Free ebook and Royal Commission highlights
Our final edition for 2018, and 286th over six years, marks the end of a tumultuous year for financial services. At Cuffelinks, while the Royal Commission provided a deep well of fascinating content, it was overshadowed by the Labor Party policy on franking credits for number of comments and feedback from our readers.
It's also been a year of rapid growth in reader numbers, with subscriptions up over 25%. We are having a mature conversation with a community of intelligent investors, who prefer to minimise the trivia and noise often presented in other financial media.
This week, as well as featuring Warren Bird's selections as Guest Editor (and Warren has been a great supporter from the start), the Cuffelinks team has selected 10 highlights from 2018. We are calling the free ebook, Firstlinks, as all these original articles were published first in Cuffelinks and proved very popular links for our readers.
We have also collected our regular updates on the Royal Commissioninto one article which serves as a time line for the most contentious issues now being considered by Kenneth Hayne.
Summer Series with Guest Editor, Warren Bird
"Cuffelinks started just after I left Colonial First State, where I’d worked for many years with Chris Cuffe. I didn’t know my next career step at the time, but when Graham Hand approached me about writing occasionally for the newsletter, I was happy to accept. I love writing about investing and fixed income in particular. Even though I’ve been back in full-time work for the past four years, I’m glad to continue writing for Cuffelinks. It’s the least I can do for the investment community which has given me so many wonderful opportunities.
Cuffelinks launched with a heavy hitter. Paul Keating, whose views on policy have always been well formed and forcefully argued, provided three articles on superannuation in the early issues. I could have picked any of them as a favourite, but this one on the potential risks that SMSFs could pose to the goals of the super system remains pertinent: Where did SMSFs come from, and where are they going?
Talking about heavy hitters, an article by Bill Gates made its way to these humble pages. He didn’t, sadly, write it for Cuffelinks originally, but it’s an interesting read about what he learned from Warren Buffett (an investor whose initials I think are the best!) Three things I’ve learned from Warren Buffett
For almost four years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a champion of ethical investing in Australia, Michael Anderson. In his days on the AMP equity team, Michael led the establishment of their Responsible Leaders funds. AMP Capital last year took the bold step of extending ethical principles across all their funds, a decision explained in this article by their current CEO, Adam Tindall: Should we exclude companies purely on ethical grounds?
Though I’ve been called an evangelist for fixed income, I’ve never argued exclusively for the asset class for the simple reason that this would not be the right thing to do. For most investors, including my own personal investments, a hefty exposure to shares is appropriate. The case for share investing was made well in this Peter Thornhill article earlier this year: Give me the long-term predictability of shares, at any age.
I have to include something from one the smartest – and most decent – people I’ve ever worked with, David Bell. He joined my team at Colonial as a graduate in 1998, and immediately improved the management of the old Colonial Mutual annuity funds that we’d taken over earlier that year. He’s had a stellar career since, and when David writes, I always learn something. This is one of his best, about how he learns from himself as well! Learning from my investment mistake.
Finally, many of you have been kind enough to give me positive feedback about my articles. Thank you. I like doing two things in my writing. One is to present complex ideas in a clear way that helps people understand investing better. The other is to confront what I believe are myths and falsehoods which are all too often presented to investors as facts. My personal favourite, which I think does both, was this piece I wrote about how a portfolio of so-called ‘junk’ bonds doesn’t have to be a junk portfolio – au contraire, they should be a core holding for many investors: Why would you invest in junk?"
Warren Bird, Guest Editor
Don't forget, if you have something about investing that you want to get off your chest over the holidays, while you have a bit more time, use our Have Your Say section.
For a PDF version of this week’s newsletter articles, click here.