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17 September 2025
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Everyone has a theory as to why housing in Australia is so expensive. There are a lot of different factors at play, from skewed migration patterns to banking trends and housing's status as a national obsession.
With Div. 296 looming, is there a smarter way to tax superannuation? This proposes a fairer, income-linked alternative that respects compounding, ensures predictability, and avoids taxing unrealised capital gains.
Neighbourhood shopping centres have fought off one perceived threat after another. What's more, they continue to offer secure income from blue-chip firms and other tenants linked mostly to essential spending.
Investors need to be more discerning this year as headline valuations are high and the economic cycle turns. Dig a little deeper, though, and there are big opportunities in overlooked shares with strong tailwinds.
Absent much higher interest rates and or unemployment, a house price crash in Australia looks unlikely. However, a failure to boost affordability risks a further slide in home ownership and rising inequality.
Despite being richer, surveyed measures of happiness have been flat to falling in Australia. Some suggest we should focus less on GDP and more on broader measures of wellbeing, though there are pros and cons to that approach.
Inflation has peaked and cash rates are about to peak. That means asset price compression is mostly behind us and 2024 should deliver positive returns for all asset classes, especially those skewed towards income.
After three decades of phenomenal growth nationally, it seemed as though Australian house prices would never go down, until they did last year. Here is a look at previous property downturns and what we might learn from them.
The National Seniors Australia (NSA) survey reveals that retirees want access to regular and stable income, even at the expense of lower returns. The need to preserve capital reduces tolerance of losses.
The tightening of credit conditions for home lending driven by the Royal Commission has not fully translated into aggregate statistics, and the slowdown may already be worse than we realise.
Income taxes in Australia are over 2.5 times larger than the 'spending' taxes such as GST, excise, and stamp duties. The latest legislation ignored reforms in taxing spending over saving again.
Australia could unlock smarter investment and greater equity by reforming housing tax concessions. Rethinking exemptions on the family home could benefit most Australians, especially renters and owners of modest homes.
The creator of the 4% rule for retirement withdrawals, Bill Bengen, has written a new book outlining fresh strategies to outlive your money, including holding fewer stocks in early retirement before increasing allocations.
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.
Are franking credits factored into share prices? The data suggests they're probably not, and there are certain types of stocks that offer higher franking credits as well as the prospect for higher returns.
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.