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19 February 2025
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Australia is at a crossroads: we’re one of the world’s richest countries, yet our wealth has stagnated over the past 15 years. A review of our history and how we became prosperous offers clues to the best ways to kickstart the economy.
Key lessons include expensive stocks can always get more expensive, Bitcoin is our tulip mania, follow the smart money, the young are coming with pitchforks on housing, and the importance of staying invested.
What is the X-factor - the largely unexpected influence that wasn’t thought about when the year began but came from left field to have powerful effects on investment returns - for 2024? It's time to select the winner.
It’s halfway through the 2020s decade and time to get a scorecheck on the Australian stock market. The picture isn't pretty as Aussie shares are having a below-average decade so far, though history shows that all is not lost.
Four years ago, we introduced our 'bubbles' chart to show how the market had become concentrated in one type of stock and one view of the future. This looks at what, if anything, has changed, and what it means for investors.
Regulatory tensions have weighed on Medibank's share price though it's unlikely that the government will step in and prop up private hospitals. This creates an opportunity to invest in Australia’s largest health insurer.
A nascent theme today is that the inverse correlation between bonds and stocks has returned as inflation and economic growth moderate. This broadens the potential for risk-adjusted returns in multi-asset portfolios.
An Australian anthropologist studying Japanese seniors has come to a counter-intuitive conclusion to what makes for a great retirement: she suggests the seeds may be found in how we approach our working years.
The housing market was subdued in 2024, and pessimism abounds as we start the new year. 2025 is likely to be a tale of two halves, with interest rate cuts fuelling a resurgence in buyer demand in the second half of the year.
While encouraging people to draw down on their accumulated wealth in retirement might be good public policy, several million retirees disagree because they are purposefully conserving that capital. It’s time for a different approach.
This examines the performance of key asset classes and sub-sectors in 2024 and over longer timeframes, and the lessons that can be drawn for constructing an investment portfolio for the next decade.
The renowned investor has penned his first investor letter for 2025 and it’s a ripper. He runs through what bubbles are, which ones he’s experienced, and whether today’s markets qualify as the third major bubble of this century.
Getting regular, growing income from stocks is tougher with the dividend yield on the ASX nearing 25-year lows. Here are some conventional and not-so-conventional ideas for investors wanting to build a dividend portfolio.
Australians are used to hearing dire warnings that they don't have enough saved for a comfortable retirement. Yet most people need to save a lot less than you might think — as long as they meet an important condition.