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6 July 2025
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Phil Ruthven is the founder and director of IBISWorld, Australia's best-known business information, forecasting and strategic services corporation
Every decade brings surprises, but discombobulating ones are more rare - being the 1910s, 1930s, 1940s and 1970s in the last century. We are just into the 2020s, but it already looks like a volatile decade.
There are many reasons why the market places too much emphasis on the short term, but taking a long view on growth, inflation, markets and sectors will lead to better policies and investments.
The Australian stock market is skewed towards mining and financial services which account for a whopping 55% of market capitalisation. In the US, these two account for only 17%. But there's more to our underperformance.
We need to think hard about how we work and live in the future. How do governments, health gurus, individuals, politicians, businesses and social groups need to act in 2021, both in dealing with COVID and thereafter?
The impact of the pandemic on Australia's debt and deficit has forced the government into borrowing on a scale unimaginable at the start of 2020. What are the implications, and what is even more important?
57 million people die every year, including over 3 million from respiratory diseases. Why is COVID-19 allowed to panic nations around the world and destroy so many businesses and jobs?
With Div. 296 looming, is there a smarter way to tax superannuation? This proposes a fairer, income-linked alternative that respects compounding, ensures predictability, and avoids taxing unrealised capital gains.
An ANU study has found that families with at least one super balance over $3 million have average wealth exceeding $19 million - suggesting most are well placed to absorb taxes on unrealised capital gains.
SMSFs have managed to match, or even outperform, larger super funds despite adopting more conservative investment strategies. This looks at how they've done it - and the potential policy implications.
Stockland’s development chief discusses supply constraints, government initiatives and the impact of Japanese-owned homebuilders on the industry. He also talks of green shoots in a troubled property market.
As the US debt ceiling looms, the usual warnings about a potential crash in bond and equity markets have started to appear. Investors can take confidence from history but should keep an eye on two main indicators.
US mega-cap tech stocks have dominated recent returns - but is familiarity distorting judgement? Like the Monty Hall problem, investing success often comes from switching when it feels hardest to do so.
How does a strategy built around systematically buying-and-holding a basket of the market's biggest losers perform? It turns out pretty well, so why don't more investors do it?