Australian investors have spent three years facing an expensive global equity market, and a local one too concentrated in banks and miners to share fully in the technology boom.
US Treasuries are dominating the headlines for all the wrong reasons. After the US Treasury announced that it will more than double the size of its long-bond buybacks, yields rose rather than fell. In other words, the world’s largest borrower told the market what it wanted, and the market said no.
Inflation remains one of the more important investment inputs investors need to get their heads around. It truly influences what you should own if you’re aiming to outperform.
You may have read that Elon Musk believes money will be worthless within ten years. Speaking recently to The Economist at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory, the richest man in history argued that robots and AI will soon produce more than humans can possibly consume, rendering money irrelevant.
Older Australians, like their counterparts in most developed markets, are travelling more often, staying longer and spending more when they arrive. It’s one of the more visible investment themes in the world today.
Markets have never lacked reasons to worry. There’s generally a long list of macro risks and challenges that need to be navigated. Yet the data on which investors succeed tells a clear story: cautious optimism has consistently outperformed pessimism.
Global investment sentiment gauges have rarely been this bullish, and history says that’s precisely when investors should pay closer attention.
Here’s what the data shows and what it means.
Most market commentaries explain major price moves after the fact with tidy causes that sound obvious only in hindsight. In my opinion, that’s not an intellectually honest approach in the current environment.