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14 October 2025
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On every valuation metric, the US appears significantly more expensive than Australia. However, American companies are also much more profitable than ours, which means the ASX may be more overvalued than most think.
Here's a detailed look at how current valuations and profit forecasts for the S&P 500 stack up versus history. The answer? Both seem excessive, making the market vulnerable to a correction or worse.
Companies have been slow to update guidance and we have yet to see the impact of inflation expectations in earnings and outlooks. Companies need to insulate costs from inflation while enjoying an uptick in revenue.
Weaker share prices may have already discounted some bad news, but cost inflation is creating wide divergences inside and across sectors. Early results show some companies are strong enough to resist sector falls.
Averages provide the central value in a data series but provide no window into variation. Every market drawdown, financial crisis and recession is different, and market cycles only end when excesses are corrected.
We are witnessing a shift away from new, “exciting, visionary, ground-breaking companies” to well-established, quality businesses, with resilient cash flows, that make good profits and have solid growth prospects.
It was a joy ride while it lasted but the free money era could not last. The consequences of the misallocation of capital into poor companies is now playing out and shareholders face billions of dollars in losses.
We tend to call any change a 'disruption', but the vast majority of so-called disruptive technologies are variations on a theme. Many innovations are really high-risk, low-probability investments.
Uber is the largest loss-making startup in history, and while investors will climb aboard the IPO and return money to early investors, the stockmarket will eventually realise there is no identifiable path to Uber profitability.
Exogenous factors like macro changes and weather can affect a company’s short-term profits. Management often blames uncontrollable factors for earnings downgrades but rarely owns up to a fortuitous tailwind.
Dividend streams tend to be stable and determined by fundamental factors. Unlike capital valuations, which are affected by estimates of prospective returns which are, in turn, strongly affected by market sentiment.
LICs can sustain their dividends not only from current year profits, but from reserves built up in prior years. This report looks at reserve levels as a sign of consistency of future dividends.
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.
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.
Retirement can be daunting for Australians facing financial uncertainty. Understand your goals, longevity challenges, inflation impacts, market risks, and components of retirement income with these crucial charts.
Five mega trends point to risks of a more inflation prone and lower growth environment. This, along with rich market valuations, should constrain medium term superannuation returns to around 5% per annum.
With rising home prices and falling affordability, political leaders preach reform. But asset disclosures show many are heavily invested in property - raising doubts about whose interests housing policy really protects.