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5 September 2025
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A recent ruling from The Australian Financial Complaints Authority may herald a new era for financial scams. For the first time, a bank is being forced to reimburse a customer for the amount they were scammed.
The ways to avoid family disputes in a business is to have good communication, adequate preparation and helpful dispute resolution. Equality without governance and consensus can leave a business exposed.
We are publishing this anonymously knowing it comes from an impeccable source. Bernie Madoff’s fund was almost distributed to retail Australian investors a year before the largest-ever hedge fund fraud was exposed.
Risk isn’t something to be avoided altogether. To achieve returns beyond the government bond rate, some level of risk must be accepted. Assessing which risks to take and calibrating them is the investor's challenge.
Investors often overlook the capital risk in high-yielding stocks. It's better to ensure capital grows and investors can sell a portion each year to make up for the shortfall in income from dividends.
Many of Australia's bank directors lack crucial skills in technology, operations and HR as part of a broader shortage of experience that is as important in dodging scandals as in business success.
The Total Return Investing approach is elegant, it makes intuitive sense and like many investment strategies, it backtests well. But low rates suggest the theory will not hold in future.
Investors should construct an ‘optimal portfolio’ that broadly falls on the efficient frontier. A ‘high growth’ balanced portfolio can deliver higher returns with lower risk than equities alone.
To avoid retreating from making investment decisions during uncertainty, investors are compelled to rely on 'rules of thumb' to guide them in decision-making. Here are many of the more popular commonly-used rules.
Most companies recognise the benefits of employee diversity for better decision-making, but it's not only about choosing people from different backgrounds. There must be an effective means of aggregating views.
Bond markets are far larger than stockmarkets, and the BBB segments in the largest of all in the corporate market. Many analysts have pointed to potential weaknesses but it pays to look a bit deeper.
Nobody revalues their own home each day in the way they revalue listed equities, but does that mean the value is constant? The daily unit price is calculated in some super funds using unlisted asset valuations.
Each generation believes its economic challenges were uniquely tough - but what does the data say? A closer look reveals a more nuanced, complex story behind the generational hardship debate.
Australia could unlock smarter investment and greater equity by reforming housing tax concessions. Rethinking exemptions on the family home could benefit most Australians, especially renters and owners of modest homes.
This goes through the different options including shares, property and business ownership and declares a winner, as well as outlining the mindset needed to earn enough to never have to work again.
Everyone has a theory as to why housing in Australia is so expensive. There are a lot of different factors at play, from skewed migration patterns to banking trends and housing's status as a national obsession.
The creator of the 4% rule for retirement withdrawals, Bill Bengen, has written a new book outlining fresh strategies to outlive your money, including holding fewer stocks in early retirement before increasing allocations.
China's steel production, equivalent to building one Sydney Harbour Bridge every 10 minutes, has driven Australia's economic growth. With China's slowdown, what does this mean for Australia's economy and investments?