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Don Stammer

Announcing the X-Factor for 2025

What is the X-Factor - the largely unexpected influence that wasn’t thought about when the year began but came from left field to have powerful effects on investment returns - for 2025? It's time to select the winner.

Time to announce the X-factor for 2024

What is the X-factor - the largely unexpected influence that wasn’t thought about when the year began but came from left field to have powerful effects on investment returns - for 2024? It's time to select the winner.

Time to announce the X-factor for 2023

What is the X-factor - the largely unexpected influence that wasn’t thought about when the year began but came from left field to have powerful effects on investment returns - for 2023? It's time to select the winner.

Time to announce the X-factor for 2022

What is the X-factor - the largely unexpected influence that wasn’t thought about when the year began but came from left field to have powerful effects on investment returns - for 2022? It's time to announce the winner.

It’s time to reveal the 2021 X-Factor in investment markets

For 40 years, recording the market's X-Factor has become an obsession. In weighing up four big candidates for the most likely X-Factor emerging from 2021 and likely to hit in 2022, there is a clear winner.

Rising bond yields complicate the COVID recovery

Investment returns have defied initial expectations set in the early stages of the Covid pandemic, but where to from here? Which asset classes offer the best opportunities?

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Retirement

The retirement scorecard: how many of these questions can you answer?

From the maths of retirement, estimating spending and picking the right asset allocation to survive a poor decade, here are the questions every retiree – current or future – should be able to answer for themselves.

2026 is not 1999

The US market looks eerily similar to the dot-com era with soaring AI spending and tech giants dominating returns. But one difference separates today’s boom from the dot-com bubble and it could determine what happens next.

Planning

Taxing time for trusts

Trusts are facing a shake-up, but an overhaul may not be necessary. Families can explore restructuring strategies that preserve succession and the asset protection benefits that have made these structures valuable.

Economy

Why the US economy is stronger than you might think

War, inflation and higher rates were expected to derail America. But has the market got it wrong? Three forces are driving the economy beyond expectations, revealing implications for stock prices and portfolio positioning.

Gold

How much trust is in your portfolio?

Everyone talks about diversifying assets. Far fewer think about diversifying trust. As inflation, debt and market assumptions collide, the question is whether portfolios need greater protection from unexpected outcomes.

Retirement

Retirement in reality - 7 months in

Seven months into retirement, I'm still uncovering surprises. This month was spent reflecting on the slow pace of health change, the myth of neatly scheduled part-time work and the unexpected persistence of retirement guilt.

The new geography of technology leadership

The next chapter of technology may not belong to the companies or business models many expect. As the landscape shifts, some opportunities are emerging in places that remain surprisingly overlooked by global markets.

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