Most of us have seen ourselves as stock pickers extraordinaire at some point in our investing journeys. The idea of investing in stocks is exciting, seductive even. After all, all you need to do is press buy and sell online and you could make yourself a fortune.
Most of us have seen ourselves as stock pickers extraordinaire at some point in our investing journeys. The idea of investing in stocks is exciting, seductive even. After all, all you need to do is press buy and sell online and you could make yourself a fortune.
In a year that started with high market valuations and the ever-present threat of inflation, there have been plenty of surprises to unnerve investors. Despite this, markets have been largely resilient, with many investors staying the course.
The Australian share market has spent much of the past decade lagging global equities, as investors increasingly looked offshore for structural growth opportunities in areas such as artificial intelligence. Yet while broad local market returns have disappointed relative to global shares, income-oriented strategies have quietly emerged as some of the strongest performing domestic equity strategies.
If you’re a fund and/or ETF investor, you’ll be familiar with fund factsheets. These fund summaries are designed to inform investors, but it’s also well-known that marketing teams often use them to present their funds attractively.
We invest for all sorts of reasons, but at the core, it’s to improve our financial lives – to afford the things we want or need in life. This is the reason why the terms ‘yield’ and ‘total return’ can be so important when you are choosing an investment – they are not interchangeable, though they are often confused for being so.
Technology has made investing easier than ever. Australian investors can now buy shares, compare ETFs, research managed funds, watch market videos, read fund updates and place trades from their mobiles.
The global space industry is moving from episodic innovation to commercial scale. Falling launch costs, improving rocket reusability, and rising demand for satellite-enabled connectivity and data are changing the economics of space. Once a prestige domain defined by government-led missions, space is now an infrastructure layer for modern communications, geospatial intelligence, defence systems, and emerging compute applications.
Sustainable investing has been through plenty of challenges of late. After a string of political and social backlashes, the return of a US president who appears to be opposed to creating a more sustainable future, a rise in greenwashing cases and a challenging period of relative performance, sustainable investing has become more demanding and, arguably, more useful.
The Federal Reserve has a new chairman in position. Kevin Warsh recently chaired his first meeting and the message was clear: global markets need to get used to less hand-holding looking forward.
ETFs have grown in popularity in the last decade, and beginner investors are often encouraged to consider them. But beginner doesn’t mean foolproof and even investments like ETFs can go wrong when investors don’t know what they are really buying and how best to use them. It’s also worth noting that beginner doesn’t mean that ETFs can’t be part of more sophisticated strategies either.
First the bad news: many Australians in their 20s and 30s feel they are already late to investing. Property prices seem out-of-reach, the cost-of-living pressure is real, and social media can make everyone else’s financial life appear rosier than it really is. For many, the right pathway forward can feel out-of-reach.
Australia’s 2026-27 Federal Budget has dramatically changed the tax conversation in ways few budgets have. In particular, the Government’s plan to replace the 50% CGT discount with cost-base indexation and a 30% minimum tax rate from 1st July 2027 has massive investment implications.
The only certainties in life are death and taxes, as the saying goes. Of course, what can be less certain is exactly how tax is applied to your earnings, particularly those from investments. Depending on the type of investment you have and what type of earnings you receive from it, tax can be affected.