Investing 101

Inflation concerns continue to rattle markets with the RBA raising rates by 25bps at their May meeting to 35bps. Uncertainty throughout the month saw April fall by 0.8 percent bringing the total year to date (end of April) returns of the ASX 300 Accumulation Index to +10.2 percent. Ausbil Investment Management have released their Equity…

Australian dividends are back to normal. After being battered and bruised during the pandemic, many high-flying dividends were either lowered or pulled as companies feared the worst and bunkered down to save money. High paying bank dividends were slashed after APRA forced lenders to limit payouts to no more than 50% of profits amid recession…

Last week’s market falls have fear and panic rising to their highest levels since the pandemic. The VIX Volatility index – the so-called “Fear Index” – hit 34.75 last Monday. At the start of the pandemic, the index hit 69.37 representing extreme volatility. During the GFC, the index hit 89.53.  There is, however, another “unconventional”…

To “Buy the Dip,” or not? There’s a lot of content out there on why this strategy is a bad one and how it traps investors. Done right however, this strategy is one of the few that can generate exponential returns.  Firstly, buying the dip is best done following a black swan event or total…

Leading global macro and geopolitical research house BCA has delivered another consensus challenging research piece this week. Writing in a paper titled ‘Solved: The Mystery of the Oil Price and Inflation Expectations’ challenges the current nature and ballooning expectations of inflation. Drawing on the work of Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman, the paper highlights the…

Bitcoin – Digital Gold This research primer is a guide to understanding Bitcoin. It explains why Bitcoin is important, how the technology for Bitcoin is likely to change over the next decade, how we can value Bitcoin, and what the main risks associated with investing in Bitcoin are. We believe Bitcoin presents the investment opportunity of…

Despite the media hype surrounding last week’s US rate hike, interest rates are going up but not as fast or as damaging as everyone thinks. The RBA upped rates for the first time in over 11 years by 25bps to 0.35 percent from 0.10 percent. Roughly a $65 a month increase, on a twenty-five year…

Morgans have released a summary of the key points from the recent bank reporting season. Of the banks that reported, Morgans says NAB was in line with consensus expectations, while ANZ and WBC beat consensus earnings expectations. Despite this, Morgans holds NAB as having the strongest 1H22 performance overall. NAB produced the strongest profit growth…

Grocery prices have soared in Australia, rising at a faster pace than the Consumer Price Index, which is benefitting the earnings of Coles and Woolworths. However, the boost could be temporary, with food inflation expected to moderate next year. The rise in inflation globally has exceeded wages growth, eroding households’ purchasing power. Lower income households…

“Whatever you are thinking might be the trigger of a potential correction today, you are quite likely to be wrong” explains Michael Hampden-Turner, Director of Fixed Income at FTSE Russell in a recent blog post discussing the recession predicting capabilities of the yield curve. Headlines have been dominated by the undeniable fact and historic analysis…

White noise is broadly defined as the combination of sounds of all different frequencies together, typically being used to mask other sounds. Among the most common uses of white noise is to help babies (and adults) sleep without background noise. Whilst highly powerful for this purpose, one could easily make the opposite conclusion when it…

In the US, corporate earnings season is in full swing, and it couldn’t come at a worse time. Investors are fleeing away from risk and to safety putting the market in a bearish unforgiving mood. Companies that have missed expectations have been absolutely smashed. According to FactSet, 70 per cent of S&P500 companies that have…