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22 December 2024
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The return of Donald Trump to the US presidency brings the prospect of more US tax cuts and deregulation, but also more tariff hikes, trade wars and policy uncertainty. Here's what it means for markets going forward.
If history is a guide, US equities looks set for subdued performance over the next few years. Things look better for Australian shares but there is an important caveat.
Absent much higher interest rates and or unemployment, a house price crash in Australia looks unlikely. However, a failure to boost affordability risks a further slide in home ownership and rising inequality.
The nine lessons include there is always a cycle, the crowd gets it wrong at extremes, what you pay for an investment matters a lot, markets don’t learn, and you need to know yourself to be a good investor.
Despite being richer, surveyed measures of happiness have been flat to falling in Australia. Some suggest we should focus less on GDP and more on broader measures of wellbeing, though there are pros and cons to that approach.
News nowadays seems to have become even more negative with constant stories of disasters, conflict, wrongdoing, grievance and loss. These risks can’t be ignored yet the history of investing suggests that pessimism doesn’t pay.
Key lessons include expensive stocks can always get more expensive, Bitcoin is our tulip mania, follow the smart money, the young are coming with pitchforks on housing, and the importance of staying invested.
What is the X-factor - the largely unexpected influence that wasn’t thought about when the year began but came from left field to have powerful effects on investment returns - for 2024? It's time to select the winner.
It’s halfway through the 2020s decade and time to get a scorecheck on the Australian stock market. The picture isn't pretty as Aussie shares are having a below-average decade so far, though history shows that all is not lost.
Four years ago, we introduced our 'bubbles' chart to show how the market had become concentrated in one type of stock and one view of the future. This looks at what, if anything, has changed, and what it means for investors.
Regulatory tensions have weighed on Medibank's share price though it's unlikely that the government will step in and prop up private hospitals. This creates an opportunity to invest in Australia’s largest health insurer.
A nascent theme today is that the inverse correlation between bonds and stocks has returned as inflation and economic growth moderate. This broadens the potential for risk-adjusted returns in multi-asset portfolios.
An Australian anthropologist studying Japanese seniors has come to a counter-intuitive conclusion to what makes for a great retirement: she suggests the seeds may be found in how we approach our working years.