Posts about Articles (24)

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 ...

There are a few studies that show that the richer you are the better your investment returns - Thomas Piketty the French economist is probably the most well-known author in this space. A recent Vox article digs into these returns using detailed Swedish data and essentially finds the same thing. The ...

The US missile strikes in Syria today create a considerable investment issue. On the bullish side, US intervention in Syria to help stop the descent into a failed state could stem the flow of refugee from Syria and potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives. Stemming the flow of refugees (the ...

There have been a bunch of articles out in the last week about the rise of the machines driving fund managers out of business. The headline is way more exciting that the details though. The detail is that computers are making fund managers more efficient.

Asset manager GMO / James Montier hit on a lot of the themes near to my heart with a recent piece on secular stagnation and the rise of populism:

No market goes up in a straight line, and so the US stock market was due a pull back at some stage. The question that you have to ask at this point is whether this is a typical market retreat following a 4 month almost straight line rise or is it something more sinister?

Yesterday we had a long look at solar and battery power and how they affect the electricity sector. Today we extend the battery analysis to the oil sector and look at electric cars. “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” Mark Twain ...