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Thursday, 28 October 2021
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In 2020, new investors were keen to build wealth in the sharemarket and were actively investing to ‘buy the dip’. But as markets have rallied to new highs amid Covid doubts, investing patterns have changed.
While the shutting of Australia’s borders to international travellers and quarantine measures is damaging to certain sectors of the economy, it is not uniformly negative for all companies.
Profits results in August 2019 were overall poor, and other factors are in play that influence share prices. It is difficult to jump aboard a profit announcement and make money in the short term.
Look for a company whose prices are rising faster than inflation without customer churn, while leveraging its existing strong relationships to cross sell or up sell or some mix of both.
The market has been looking for inflation for most of the last decade. Low interest rates should increase consumption, borrowing and demand and result in higher prices. What killed inflation?
Online currently makes up around 3% of the total Australian grocery spend, but there is considerable space to grow. The stakes are high to get this next stage of online technology right.
There’s a lot of talk of the WAAAX stocks causing fund underperformance, but they’re simply not big enough compared with choosing the wrong winners and losers among the large cap stocks.
Food and beverage producers are under pressure to reduce the harmful impact of their products, and investors can encourage the trend by investing in companies or funds that recognise society's needs.
Australia has enjoyed a remarkable 25 year run without a ’recession’, but our stockmarket has badly lagged the US in recent years, and company earnings are still some 30% below the level of 10 years ago. Will it improve soon?
A Senate Inquiry is examining the need for a Modern Slavery Act, and many Australian companies are reporting on their activities due to their overseas business. It's the next front towards more sustainable investing.
A decline in activity related to household construction, combined with the arrival of foreign retail brands, does not bode well for Australian retailers. And an online behemoth may be an even bigger threat.
We tend to forget that house prices often fall. Direct lending controls are more effective than rate rises because macroprudential limits affect the volume of money for housing leaving business rates untouched.
The survey drew a fantastic 2,000 responses with over 1,000 comments and polar opposite views on what is good policy. Do most people believe the home should be in the age pension asset test, and what do they say?
Any policy decision needs to recognise who is affected by a change. It pays to check the data on who pays taxes, who owns assets and who earns the income to ensure an equitable and efficient outcome.
With articles on the pensions assets test read about 40,000 times, 3,500 survey responses and thousands of comments, there was a lot of great reader participation. A few comments added extra insights.
It is hard to think of any area of widespread public concern where the same policies have been pursued for so long, in the face of such incontrovertible evidence that they have failed to achieve their objectives.
There are reasons to believe inflation will stay under control, and although we may see a slowing in the global economy, two companies should benefit from the themes of 'Stable Compounders' and 'Structural Winners'.