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8 October 2025
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Recent years have been challenging for contrarian investors, though 2025 has brought wild market swings, and with it, more opportunity. MFS' Zahid Kassam discusses contrarianism and his favourite global stocks.
With heightened uncertainty and the market near record highs, it's important to focus on companies that are largely insulated from unpredictable macroeconomic risks. CSL and Corporate Travel Management fit the bill.
Australia's economy is in good shape after the extraordinary shift in global markets over the past 12 months, but here are nine macro and geopolitical factors for investors to check in a rapidly-changing world.
In volatile markets, asset allocation should consider scenarios based on differing likelihoods. There are always a number of low probability, extreme outcomes so don't assume the central case is the only possibility.
The end of the year is approaching fast, when investors consider rebalancing their portfolios. What are the big themes in a market facing the threat of inflation and rising rates for the first time in many years?
Many professional investors thought that environmental, social and governance trends would take a step back in the pandemic, but the opposite occurred. It highlighted factors with a material impact on financial results.
A summary of 10 investing themes for 2021 including early-cycle opportunities, populism, digital transformation and supply chains, plus the outlook for equities, fixed interest and alternatives.
With signs that the economic recession will not be as deep as first feared, many companies will emerge strongly with robust business models. Here are the sectors with the best opportunities.
The key to investment success is identifying the winners from the structural growth tailwinds, regardless of the macro-environment. Here are examples of likely winners and strugglers.
Too many investors focus on macro trends, when what really matters is catching a company in the right part of its S-curve, when its earnings and products are about to take off.
Dr John Hewson sees a strong potential for a US recession in 2020. Forecasting markets can be a graveyard, but global growth of the last decade has been paid for by borrowings and QE. When is payback time?
Many experts are warning that over the past 60 years, the yield curve has inverted in advance of every recession, but will a yield curve inversion have a different result this time?
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.