Nucleus Research and Insights

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.

The biggest risk to the thoughts I have presented on energy costs are the assumptions about the cost of batteries. Battery costs have been shrinking at 20% per annum for the last few years. If that cost improvement continues for the next 5-10 years then disruption for the energy sector will have ...

Last week we got an update from the US EIA on the growing differential between electricity prices throughout the day – the spread is now out to $45/mWh between prices at 1pm and prices at 8pm: Source: EIA Given this, it is worth a quick update of where prices stand in our journey to energy parity, ...

Quick chart from the Wall Street Journal / BMI overnight asking the question: Are energy stocks undervalued? The answer is no. No, they aren’t.

Bloomberg ran a story this week about conflicts of interest in the robo-advice world with a few choice digs: Some of the big banks’ new algorithmic programs may favor funds from companies that pay the banks millions of dollars for access to their wealthy clients.

We have had a terrific response from investors in the opening month at Nucleus Wealth. Many thanks to those in our first round for your feedback and support – the construction of this fund has been over a year in the making and realizes a longtime goal of the Macro Business team to constructively ...