Posts about Articles

US midterm elections don’t usually determine the direction of markets on their own. But this time, the result could have an unusually important influence on how much room Donald Trump has to pursue his economic agenda in the second half of his term.

I recently had a conversation with Cameron Murray about the economics of an ageing population, and some of his arguments challenged the way we usually think about demographics. The common narrative is that an older population means fewer workers, more retirees, and an increasingly unsustainable ...

For decades, the 60/40 portfolio was one of investing's simplest solutions. Hold 60% in shares for growth and 40% in bonds for stability. When shares struggled, bonds were often there to cushion the blow.

After speaking with Martin North about the Australian housing market, his key point was: there is no single Australian property market. National house-price figures can give us a useful headline, but they can also hide very different conditions between suburbs, cities and household types. The more ...

Investment risk is complicated. It includes the risk that earnings fall, margins collapse, tenants leave, interest costs rise, debt cannot be refinanced, an asset needs unexpected expenditure, or that you simply paid too much in the first place. Yet much of the investment industry boils all of this ...

I have been struck by how difficult it has become to answer a seemingly simple question: how much oil is actually available to the global market? During a normal period, inventories, tanker movements and production figures give investors a reasonably clear picture of supply and demand. During an ...

For most of my career, government debt has been treated as a problem to be managed. Politicians talked about balancing budgets. Treasurer speeches revolved around surpluses. Credit rating agencies mattered. Governments that overspent were expected to pay a political price.

Australia’s housing market is undergoing a significant correction, and the evidence increasingly suggests that the decline has further to run. House prices have already fallen rapidly across the major capital cities, but the combination of higher interest rates, weaker investor demand, slowing ...

Nvidia has become more than just a semiconductor company. Its results have become one of the clearest indicators of whether the enormous investment boom in artificial intelligence is still gathering momentum.

Every ASX reporting season, investors are bombarded with headlines declaring that corporate Australia is thriving or struggling based on the latest profit results. Bank earnings beat expectations. Miners miss forecasts. Retailers warn about consumer spending. Before long, a narrative emerges that ...

Most of the debate around Division 296 has focused on whether taxing unrealised gains is fair. A more interesting question is who bears the cost of Australia's changing demographics.

For much of the past six months, the direction of U.S. Treasury yields has been hard to ignore. The 10-year Treasury yield has climbed from around 4% to roughly 4.7%, briefly moving above that level. That has raised a broader question for investors: can U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ...

Every few years, investors are told a new tax change will transform the investing landscape.

For me, the most interesting investment question involving SpaceX isn’t whether it is worth the enormous valuation. It’s whether Elon Musk can build AI data centres quickly enough to change the supply-demand balance of the entire industry.

When I think about El Niño, the first thing that comes to mind is usually weather: droughts, floods, bushfires and storms. But for investors, I think the more important question is what happens after the weather changes. A super El Niño does not automatically mean a market crash, nor does it ...