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4 November 2025
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Welcome to the Firstlinks Edition 314
Graham Hand
For a PDF version of this week’s newsletter articles, click here.
More Australians are retiring with larger mortgages and less super. This paper explores how unlocking housing wealth can help ease the nation’s growing retirement cashflow crunch.
In any year since 1875, if you'd invested in the ASX, turned away and come back eight years later, your average return would be 120% with no negative periods. It's just one of the must-have stats that all investors should know.
Younger Australians think they’ll need $100k a year in retirement - nearly double what current retirees spend. Expectations are rising fast, but are they realistic or just another case of lifestyle inflation?
Five mega trends point to risks of a more inflation prone and lower growth environment. This, along with rich market valuations, should constrain medium term superannuation returns to around 5% per annum.
Whether for yourself or a family member, it’s never too early to start thinking about aged care. This looks at the best ways to plan ahead, as well as the changes coming to aged care from November 1 this year.
Labor has caved to pressure on key parts of the Division 296 tax, though also added some important nuances. Here are six experts’ views on the changes and what they mean for you.
With investor sentiment shifting and ETFs surging ahead, we pit Australia’s biggest LICs against their ETF rivals to see which delivers better returns over the short and long term. The results are revealing.
Investing in the ASX 20 or 200 requires vigilance. Blue chips aren’t immune to failure, and the old belief that you can simply hold them forever is outdated.
Adding high-quality compounders at attractive valuations is difficult in an efficient market. However, during the volatile FY25 reporting season, an opportunity arose to increase a position in Mexican fast-food chain GYG.
Factor-based ETFs are bridging the gap between active and passive investing, giving investors low-cost access to proven drivers of long-term returns such as quality, value, momentum and dividend yield.
In Breakneck, Dan Wang contrasts China’s “engineering state” with America’s “lawyerly society,” showing how these mindsets drive innovation, dysfunction, and reshape global power amid rising rivalry.
The rules to age successfully include, 'the unexamined life lasts longer', 'change no more than one-eighth of your life at a time', 'nobody is thinking about you', and 'pursue virtue but don’t sweat it'.