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Wednesday, 19 January 2022
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There have been few times in the past 140 years when investors were willing to pay for more than 30 years’ worth of earnings, yet here we are around 40. This starting point does not augur well for future returns.
Cryptocurrencies have created the perfect recipe to encourage speculation with the most important ingredient for a bubble to form being something new and shiny to attract investor attention. What's it really worth?
Rules of thumb often oversimplify things. While it looks like an index or passive portfolio spreads risks across the market, it is surprising how concentrated indexes have become, leaving investors with sector bets.
For long-term investors, the most important factor driving returns is the price paid to acquire a stock. Emerging Markets stocks exhibit favourable valuations on both an absolute and relative basis.
Businesses exploit the psychological processes that people go through when they decide to buy something, but does the US research work when faced with "traditional hard-bitten, no-bullshit Australian scepticism"?
This is our annual checklist of what retirees need to be aware of in 2022. It is a long list of 25 items and not everything will apply to your situation. Run your eye over the benefits and entitlements.
Australians are generally optimistic about retiring comfortably but their confidence lags retirement savers in other countries. They are also the most unsure about future returns and withdrawal rates in retirement.
Depending on personal circumstances, it may be time to rethink the bias to paying down housing debt over wealth accumulation in super. Do the sums and ask these four questions to plan for your future.
As we enter a new year, we dive into the Morningstar database to see which asset classes have performed well over various time periods, with the related risks and largest historical drawdowns.
The Warren Buffett/Charlie Munger partnership is the stuff of legends, but even Charlie admits it is coming to an end ("I'm nearly dead"). He is one of the few people in investing prepared to say what he thinks.
We often assign quality in investment choice by historical returns, backed up when we see fund flows directed towards such historically well-performing funds. This is a mistake made by investors and regulators.