The Weekend Edition includes a market update plus Morningstar adds links to two additional articles.
In Loving Memory of Graham Hand
Graham’s wife, Deborah Solomon, and daughters, Jenna and Elana, have established the Graham Hand Gift to honour Graham’s remarkable legacy and to support the causes that he cared about.
In addition to Graham’s giant legacy in financial journalism and investment thought leadership, Graham was a passionate advocate for giving. His efforts resulted in millions of dollars committed to the community through the Australian Philanthropic Services Foundation.
To honour Graham, the Graham Hand Gift will support projects that mattered to Graham, including social inclusion and empowerment through football (the “real kind”, as Graham would say).
This giving fund, held within the Australian Philanthropic Services Foundation, ensures that Graham’s vision of giving continues to make an impact in his name.
Donors can make a tax-deductible donation to the Graham Hand Gift via EFT or BPAY using the following link: Donate to the Graham Hand Gift (https://apsforms.tfaforms.net/f/donate?accid=001Ob00000MmHWX).
For assistance or further information, please contact Rachael Rofe and the APS Foundation team on 02 9779 6312 or email [email protected].
Thank you for your support in celebrating Graham’s extraordinary legacy.
In this week's edition...
The Big 4 banks have been on a tear of late and it's left income investors in a bind: do they stick with them even though they offer relatively low dividend yields and poor prospects or should they look elsewhere? James Gruber gives his take on the issue.
Australian Foundation Investment Company (AFIC) Managing Director, Mark Freeman, and his portfolio managers sat down for an interview with Firstlinks. Joseph Taylor details what they had to say on a range of topics, including the current discount to NTA, AFIC's dividend and buyback plans, and what it's doing with bank holdings after their recent run-up.
Most Australians don’t realise they are being charged up to six different types of fees on their superannuation. These fees can be opaque and hard to compare across different funds and investment options, as Tony Kaye outlines.
Ausbil Executive Chairman and CIO Paul Xiradis was recently inducted into the Funds Management Hall of Fame. This week, he shares his outlook for ASX large caps and why he's optimistic for 2025 and beyond. Paul also shares some of his favoured stocks.
Commercial property has been through a tumultuous two years. The big question is, are we near the bottom? Cromwell's Colin Mackay goes through the four phases of a typical property cycle and why we may be through the worst part of it.
The concept of an 'equity risk premium' has driven asset allocation decisions for decades. A revamped study suggests it was a relatively short-lived phenomenon rather than the mainstay many thought. Phil Graham has more.
Two extra articles from Morningstar this weekend. Sim Mody highlights two cheap ASX lithium plays and Joseph Taylor quizzes our financials analyst on the poor share price performance of Perpetual and Platinum.
Lastly, in this week's whitepaper, the World Gold Council has key gold demand trends from the third quarter of this year.
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Weekend market update
In the US, major stock indexes rose Friday, building on gains made earlier this week, while investors watched for “bitcoin $100K” after the cryptocurrency hit another new high. U.S. economic activity picked up in November. S&P's purchasing managers indexes showed the fastest pace of expansion since April 2022, with a stronger-than-expected reading for the services sector. The S&P 500 added 0.35%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 1% higher and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.2%. The 10-year yield slipped to settle at 4.409%, gold lifted 1.3% to US$2,711 an ounce, and crude oil also finished positively, up 1.7% to US$71.3 a barrel.
From AAP Netdesk:
The local share market has resumed its upward trend after a two-day breather, setting an all-time closing high for a second time this week. The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index on Friday finished up 70.8 points, or 0.85%, to 8,393.8, while the broader All Ordinaries rose 66.1 points, or 0.77%, to 8,633.1. For the week the ASX200 rose 1.3%, with Friday's close eclipsing the previous record set on Tuesday by 19.8 points.
Every sector of the ASX on Friday finished at least marginally higher except for tech, which dropped 4.5%, weighed down by its biggest component. WiseTech Global fell 12.4% to a two-week low of $121.74 after the global shipping platform cut its guidance, saying the recent allegations against founder Richard White had caused a distraction that would delay the launch of its new container transport optimisation product. The company's board also said an independent review had cleared Mr White of the allegations of undisclosed workplace relationships, inappropriate spending and bullying.
Other tech companies were down, with Nextdc falling 3.7%, Life360 dipping 3.3% and Megaport retreating 9.5% to $7.57 as the scalable bandwidth company held its annual general meeting in Brisbane.
The ASX's energy sector put up the strongest gains, rising 2.3%, with Woodside gaining 2.2%, Whitehaven Coal adding 3.6% and uranium developer Deep Yellow growing 6.3%.
A2Milk was the best-performing individual ASX200 component, soaring 13.3% to a two-week high of $5.45 after managing director and chief executive David Bortolussi told the New Zealand milk company's annual meeting that year-to-date trading was running ahead of plans and guidance.
Three of the big four banks were higher, with CBA growing 1.8% to $159.03, NAB adding 1.4% to $40.07 and Westpac rising 0.9% to $33.83. ANZ was the outlier, basically flat at $32.26.
In the heavyweight mining sector, BHP climbed 0.9% to $40.16, Rio Tinto added 0.6% to $117.18 and Fortescue grew 1.1% to $18.31.
Also, Northern Star rose 1.9% to $17.90while Resolute Mining finished at 40.5 cents after the goldminer confirmed that its chief executive and two other employees had been released from their two-week detention by authorities in Mali over what the company described as unfounded allegations related to taxes and offshore accounts. Resolute paid $US80 million to Mali and promised to pay another $US80 million to secure their release.
Curated by James Gruber, Joseph Taylor, and Leisa Bell
A full PDF version of this week’s newsletter articles will be loaded into this editorial on our website by midday.
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