Nucleus Research and Insights

The Australian SMSF Landscape We recently ran a webinar entitled the SMSF Asset Allocation Master Class in which, as an introduction, I thought I might provide a snapshot of the Australian SMSF landscape. The following graphs have been be created from an ATO dataset who publish SMSF statistics ...

Ethical investing is frankly confusing. There are plenty of good products, but also a number of products whose promoters may not be as ethical as the stocks they invest in...

One of our core investment themes is that international stocks are the best asset class for Australian investors at this point in the cycle. To date, this has been the right call, with our international portfolio increasing almost 10% over the last 3 months on the back of a weak Australian dollar, ...

ABC's The Business called upon David Llewellyn Smith for comment on current equity prices in the United States and what may lie ahead.

We have a number of Automobile and Auto Component stocks in our portfolio and September was a good month for both sectors with many of the stocks adding 10%+ over the month. A few have continued the performance into October (GM, in particular, was up 12% last month and another 14% month to date). ...

During September the mix of the falling Australian dollar and increasing international equities saw all of our portfolios again outperform their benchmarks except the income portfolio. The international portfolio was the standout, up 4% for the month.

Bloomberg ran a report last week on electric cars that turned into a longer read than I expected as I chased through some of their numbers that seemed wrong: It’s been 10 years since Apple Inc. unleashed a surge of innovation that upended the mobile phone industry. Electric cars, with a little help ...

Apologies for the lateness of this report, we are still getting reporting systems ironed out with our portfolio provider – you will be hearing from us much earlier for the next monthly report. While some of the key trends that we are positioning the portfolio for moved against us last month (bonds ...

There has been a recent push in the planning fraternity to renew calls for upfront financial planning advice to be made tax deductible. (As opposed to ongoing investment management fees etc) It’s an interesting quandary and one I do not expect a resolution upon soon. Tax deductibility is an ...

There was another entry into the academic statistical war that makes up the debate between whether asset allocation or stock selection is more important from ReSolve Asset Management earlier this year.

Global reporting season was pretty decent at a headline level – there are lots of more interesting things happening at a sector and stock level, but I’ll get into that later on in the week.

The new look US Department of Energy released a big report last week on the power industry. As a reminder this is the report commissioned by the new Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, who seemed as if he had already written the conclusion that "coal was king" and was just looking for someone to come ...

Investing can be a volatile ride, the last few days have reminded us. The last few days have also reminded us why holding international equities is often beneficial for Australian investors – the Australian dollar acts as a shock absorber on returns when volatility hits, which is exactly the ...

Given: (1) a spike in the AUD to over 80c vs the USD (2) an increase in the interest in our international fund and (3) that our tactical asset allocation portfolios remain heavily overweight international, for this post I’m focussing on our international equities portfolio and our exposures. It’s a ...

The bit I don’t get with the whole CBA money laundering through ATMs is why? The fees are so small. If you are going to launder money you need to (1) take a hefty fee (10-15% should be a minimum) and (2) obtain leverage over the criminal for future use.