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21 January 2025
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Australian retail investors appear pessimistic about the market outlook with cash allocations at record highs. Those buying prefer materials and energy stocks, while fallen angels such as Magellan are out of favour.
Hundreds of green hydrogen projects show this energy opportunity is finally being taken seriously. While a cost disadvantage and technical challenges need to be overcome, it promises to deliver a path to net zero.
The long current positive run for the Australian stock market is unusual but not a warning of imminent demise. Previous long positive runs were not all followed by corrections but this one may end this month.
In 2020, new investors were keen to build wealth in the sharemarket and were actively investing to ‘buy the dip’. But as markets have rallied to new highs amid Covid doubts, investing patterns have changed.
Experienced traders on nabtrade boost their 'buy and hold' portfolios with shorter-term strategies based on their personal views of the world. These are not for everybody but show how some individuals react.
As more Australians tilt their investments to global equities, they often overlook the exchange rate risk and fees. The move from US57 cents to US73 cents in six months shows the unhedged impact.
With signs that the economic recession will not be as deep as first feared, many companies will emerge strongly with robust business models. Here are the sectors with the best opportunities.
Looking back over the last decade shows the factors which have driven success for some companies and failure for others, driven by falling interest rates, a lower Aussie dollar and technology changes.
Profits results in August 2019 were overall poor, and other factors are in play that influence share prices. It is difficult to jump aboard a profit announcement and make money in the short term.
There’s a lot of talk of the WAAAX stocks causing fund underperformance, but they’re simply not big enough compared with choosing the wrong winners and losers among the large cap stocks.
SMSFs are continuing to use the ASX20 as a bargain buy, but are also diversifying into mid caps and international shares via direct investments, ETFs and LICs.
The Australian market again delivered strong returns in 2017-2018 with big sector differences, but there were large variations in global performance depending on the currency hedging strategy.
Last year, I wrote an article suggesting returns from ASX stocks would trample those from housing over the next decade. One year later, this is an update on how that forecast is going and what's changed since.
The housing market was subdued in 2024, and pessimism abounds as we start the new year. 2025 is likely to be a tale of two halves, with interest rate cuts fuelling a resurgence in buyer demand in the second half of the year.
The renowned investor has penned his first investor letter for 2025 and it’s a ripper. He runs through what bubbles are, which ones he’s experienced, and whether today’s markets qualify as the third major bubble of this century.
This examines the performance of key asset classes and sub-sectors in 2024 and over longer timeframes, and the lessons that can be drawn for constructing an investment portfolio for the next decade.
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.
Check out the most-read Firstlinks articles from 2024. From '16 ASX stocks to buy and hold forever', to 'The best strategy to build income for life', and 'Where baby boomer wealth will end up', there's something for all.