As any broker can tell you. Volumes dwindle. Interest in the stock market (any market) gets progressively eroded if it doesn’t trend up. You need an uptrend to retain interest, an uptrend makes the stock market easy/popular/active. The longer the downtrend goes, the more the interest wanes. As the interest wanes the core function of…
Background: In March this year Bill Shorten pledged that should Labor win the upcoming election then from 1st July 2019 they will axe cash refunds for excess imputation credits paid to individuals and in superannuation funds. This would reverse the cash refund of imputation credits introduced by John Howard two decades ago. It would also…
Two of my kids are still at school and approaching that moment of decision, foisted on them by time, possibly unwillingly, when they are being told they have to decide what they are going to do after school, which, dauntingly, implies they have to answer the question, right now, “what am I going to do…
Australian investors who want a diversified portfolio in a particular asset class without having to manage it themselves are able to Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) on the ASX. ETFs are exchange traded on the ASX. That means you can buy and sell them on the ASX just like shares. They trade and settle in exactly…
In order to make any money in the stock market you need to focus on the unknown and stop wasting your time on the known. Every year the top and bottom performing stocks are not the stocks the market predicts most accurately, those stocks will hardly move, the big money is always in the stocks…
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EQUITIES AND PROPERTY I cannot tell you how many times I have read that you double your money in Australian property investment every ten years. It is the core assumption in all property marketing it seems. Of course to make any money out of that implied 7 per cent return per…
Much has been written recently about the relative merits of taking an active approach or just letting your funds track an index. The growth of passive funds has been extraordinary. The head of Vanguard in Australia was in the news last week as the FUM have grown to $5.4 trillion. $2.9 trillion is tracking indices…
When I started broking in 1982 there were no personal computers let alone email or online broking. Everyone used full service broking because they had to. Now you don’t have to but the industry still exists and if you talk to most people about full service brokers they will immediately launch into the terrible experiences…
Thanks to compulsory superannuation most people are invested in managed funds. You didn’t really make a choice to invest in managed funds but courtesy of the cozy relationship between employers and fund managers almost all of you tick that little box that says “put my super in your default fund” when you are employed. The…
I wrote this article a few years ago and I reproduce it for my 60th Birthday. Ithaca is the island in Greece that Odysseus had so much trouble returning to in Homer’s Odyssey. On his way he survives run ins with the Cicones, Polyphemus (Cyclops to you), Circe, the Sirens, Scylla, the winds of Aeolus,…
