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20 June 2026
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As the world shifts away from one of artificially suppressed interest rates and cheap manufacturing, investors will need to carefully consider how companies are positioned to navigate the new higher-cost paradigm.
While capitalism has its downsides, no system allocates resources better, and the result is a complex, adaptive economy. But indexation has amplified the disconnect between valuations and fundamentals, with worrying implications.
The negative stock/bond correlation from 1998 until 2019 was the anomaly, not the positive relationship that began in 2022. In the years ahead, portfolio diversification should come increasingly from security and manager selection.
Decelerating inflation should provide a tailwind for high quality bonds but will likely hurt company margins and therefore stock prices. Uncompetitive companies facing elevated capital costs will be most at risk.
Portfolio construction requires actions, not just words, based on expected returns, volatility and correlations. We have not seen sufficient pain to believe we are at the bottom of the equity cycle.
Averages provide the central value in a data series but provide no window into variation. Every market drawdown, financial crisis and recession is different, and market cycles only end when excesses are corrected.
Beneath the dominance of the ASX's largest stocks, much of the market has been left behind. High-quality companies are now trading at levels rarely seen, offering opportunities for investors willing to look deeper.
Something unusual is happening in markets. The winners are pulling further ahead at an extraordinary pace. As return dispersion hits extreme levels, volatility is rising and the investing landscape is becoming harder to navigate.
Extreme wealth concentration is no longer just a side effect of growth. As inequality deepens, its consequences are shifting from a social concern to a broader threat to economic stability and democratic resilience.
AI exuberance is colliding with economic reality. Cracks are emerging as spending surges, ROI remains uncertain and enterprise behaviour shifts. The next phase may look less like an expansion and more like a reckoning.
The 2026 budget has reignited Australia’s tax reform debate, but more work remains. Beneath the surface lies a harder question: what structural reforms are needed to make the country's tax system fit for the future?
The Budget's negative gearing changes defer deductions rather than deny them, yet a worked example shows quarantining can halve the tax benefit's present value for buyers of established dwellings.
In just four years, Australia's private capital landscape has transformed. We are seeing changes across who deploys capital, how deals are structured and why new platforms and investor pathways are rapidly emerging.