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Wednesday, 29 September 2021
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The leading global innovation companies such as Amazon, Google, Tencent and Alibaba, alongside tomorrow’s champions in Tesla, Afterpay and Xero, offer better prospects than traditional ‘old-world’ value investments.
Warren Buffett's annual letter has a simple focus on long-term investing: "All that’s required is the passage of time, an inner calm, ample diversification and a minimisation of transactions and fees."
There are pockets of bubble pricing in some assets that can pop at any time, but overall, valuations are frothy but prices of most companies can be sustained if not hit by rising bond rates.
FANMAG returns have been strong but not relative to their predecessors. Looking at a broader group of large tech companies, most have lagged the market. Fad-based investing is no substitute for broad diversification.
Warren Buffett's investment portfolio gains attention because of his legendary status, but parts of his empire in insurance, railways, metalworking and aircraft suppliers have been damaged by the pandemic.
Investors with heavy allocations to a broad US index should check how much is exposed to tech stocks, especially when valuations look a bit steep. It might be time to reallocate to other sectors or styles.
The connectivity enabled by the ‘super platforms’ of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Tencent and Alibaba is creating the best investment opportunities as business catches on.
Checking global stocks with higher prices than the FANGAM stocks but weaker margins and growth identified almost 100 companies. Astonishingly, the ‘Heady Hundred’ are valued at over US$3 trillion.
Eventually, prices become so extreme they bear no relationship to reality, and a bubble forms. I believe we are there today, not for all stocks but for many in the technology space.
At a time when value investing is under attack, a reminder that Benjamin Graham heavily influenced Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, and they have built his ideas into broad investing strategies.
Investors underestimate the power of network effects, which increase the lifetime value of users and deliver high incremental margins with fixed operating costs. It's worth trawling the market for strong network effects.
Although some domestic cyclical companies currently offer value, the attraction of offshore growth is a key factor for investors, including strong Australian companies with global aspirations.
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.
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?
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.