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8 October 2025
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Passive and active investing, investment mistakes and insights, interpreting return on equity, and a look at Australia's listed real estate sector.
Making a passive investment requires an active decision, and since index-based funds are structured using market prices, they build in influences of the active factor of price momentum.
It's difficult for investors to find active fund managers that consistently outperform the market over multiple periods, and the claim that active managers do better in falling markets also lacks recent evidence.
The investment landscape might have changed dramatically over the last 25 years, but investors can still rely on many of the same principles from the past to make sound investment decisions in the present.
An important ratio for analysing companies is the ‘return on equity’, but while it may seem to be a simple measure of the earning power of a business, it can tell much more.
Amid the ups and down of the current A-REIT reporting season, the listed real estate sector performed relatively well, and most managers have not been tempted to boost returns by increasing gearing.
This AI cycle feels less like a revolution and more like a rerun. Just like fibre in 2000, shale in 2014, and cannabis in 2019, the technology or product is real but the capital cycle will be brutal. Investors beware.
An explosion in low-skilled migration to Australia has depressed wages, killed productivity, and cut rental vacancy rates to near decades-lows. It’s time both sides of politics addressed the issue.
LICs are continuing to struggle with large discounts and frustrated investors are wondering whether it’s worth holding onto them. This explains why the next 6-12 months will be make or break for many LICs.
Australian housing’s 50-year boom was driven by falling rates and rising borrowing power — not rent or yield. With those drivers exhausted, future returns must reconcile with economic fundamentals. Are we ready?
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?
This week, I got the news that my mother has dementia. It came shortly after my father received the same diagnosis. This is a meditation on getting old and my regrets in not getting my parents’ affairs in order sooner.