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4 December 2025
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World share markets seem toppy at first glance, though digging deeper reveals important nuances. While the top 2% of stocks are pricey, they're also growing faster, and the remaining 98% are inexpensive versus history.
Usually, credit crunches come before banking crises, but this time it might happen the other way around. Here are the likely paths forward, what things that investors should monitor and the best places to hide.
Despite recent residential property price falls, housing affordability is getting worse, not better, driven by rising interest rates. Our numbers suggest further property price declines will be difficult to avoid.
There are many reasons why the worries about inflation are overstated and investors should protect their portfolios against falling inflation rather than rising. The economy is completely different to the 1970s.
The 60/40 diversified portfolio has been the mainstay of the superannuation industry for decades. But it is built on a fundamental principle of defensive bond returns, and its time is nigh.
With coal, gas and oil, the more we use, the deeper we need to dig and the more expensive energy becomes. Solar and battery power are on a technology curve: the more the world produces, the cheaper it becomes.
In an interview with Firstlinks, CEO Mark Freeman discusses how speculative ASX stocks have crushed blue chips this year, companies he likes now, and why he’s confident AFIC’s NTA discount will reverse.
The ASX's performance this year has again highlighted a persistent riddle facing investors – how to approach an index reliant on a few sectors and handful of stocks. Here are some ideas on how to build a durable portfolio.
Despite three years of the retirement income covenant, regulators warn a widening gap between leading and lagging super funds, with weak member insights and patchy outcomes measurement threatening retirees’ financial futures.
From soaring government deficits to the rise of network giants, equity markets are marked by persistent imbalance and rapid structural change. In this environment, opportunity favours those willing to look beyond the obvious.
OpenAI’s business appears commoditized and the model is not sustainable in the long run. If markets catch on, the company could face higher borrowing costs, or worse, and that would have major spillover effects.
‘Hyperscalers’ including Google, Meta and Microsoft are fuelling an unprecedented surge in equity and debt issuance to bankroll massive AI-driven capital expenditure. History shows this isn't without risk.
Leveraged ETFs seek to deliver some multiple of an underlying index or reference asset’s return over a day. Yet, they aren’t even delivering the target return on an average day as they’re meant to do.