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4 October 2025
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Investments in intangible assets are as crucial to many companies as investments in capital equipment. The different accounting treatment of these investments, however, weighs on reported earnings and could render ratios like P/E less useful for investors.
There have been few times in the past 140 years when investors were willing to pay for more than 30 years’ worth of earnings, yet here we are around 40. This starting point does not augur well for future returns.
Estimating the value of a company based on a multiple of earnings is a common investment analysis technique, but it is often useless. Multiples do a poor job of valuing the best growth businesses, like Microsoft.
Cryptocurrencies have created the perfect recipe to encourage speculation with the most important ingredient for a bubble to form being something new and shiny to attract investor attention. What's it really worth?
As much as value investors with spare cash want to jump on undervalued companies, it's probably not the time to buy the dip in the market just yet as the US braces for coronavirus's full impact.
BlackRock's CEO, Larry Fink, wrote to over 1,000 business leaders on the importance of long-term value creation and why companies should make a positive contribution to society.
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.