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Thursday, 23 September 2021
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How do you separate skill from luck in the performance of a fund manager? Investing is a mix of art and science in a highly-competitive industry full of smart people. Here are tips on what to look for.
Small cap investors face less mature companies with zero profit that need significant capital for growth. Without years of financial data to rely on, investors must employ creative ways to value companies.
There are only three sources of returns when investing in companies. Whether an investment delivers on dividends, earnings or valuation expansion determines performance, and the contribution of each varies over time.
The anniversary of the pandemic low point in the S&P500 was 23 March 2021, delivering a staggering one-year return of 77%. If history is a guide, as policy normalises, investors will pivot to 'compounders' not cyclicals.
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.
Too many investors are lumping all companies together in the current crisis, but some businesses will emerge in good shape with recovering revenues, while others are disadvantaged permanently.
While hot stocks generate media coverage and attention from investors, for the overall health of the market, they are irrelevant. A few big companies drive the Australian market.
Most S&P500 companies are doing well with recent reported earnings above expectations. In the tech sector, the Big Five (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet) have also diversified their income sources.
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?
Surely it's a truism that economic growth, earnings growth and growth in stock prices are directly related. When you look over the last three decades, the real world appears quite different.
The RBA Governor says rising house prices are due to "the design of our taxation and social security systems". The OECD says "the prolonged boom in house prices has inflated the wealth of many pensioners without impacting their pension eligibility." What's your view?
It's a remarkable statistic. In any year since 1875, if you had invested in the Australian stock index, turned away and come back eight years later, your average return would be 120% with no negative periods.
Never stand between Australian households and an uncapped government programme with $3 billion in ‘free money’ to build or renovate their homes. But excess supply is coming with an absence of net migration.
Picking macro trends is difficult. What may seem logical and compelling one minute may completely change a few months later. There are better rewards from focussing on identifying the best companies at good prices.
Critics of franking credits are missing the main point. The taxable income of shareholders/taxpayers must also include the company tax previously paid to the ATO before the dividend was distributed. It is fair.
Wet streets cause rain. The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect is a name created by writer Michael Crichton after he realised that everything he read or heard in the media was wrong when he had direct personal knowledge or expertise on the subject. He surmised that everything else is probably wrong as well, and financial markets are no exception.