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21 January 2025
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Want to make better investing decisions? Do what the most skilled investors do and find a way to ignore the meaningless information you are bombarded with on a daily basis.
After more than a decade of pitiful yields, bonds are back offering better prospects for income investors. What are the best ways to take advantage of the market inefficiencies in Australian fixed income?
For decades, it's been thought that investors focus more on limiting losses than making gains. New research suggests that as we age, the reverse may be true, which has significant implications for the investment industry.
Price is a subjective measure with no mathematical definition, but valuation approximates the truth. With many stock prices down, investors looking to buy should consider three steps suited to current market conditions.
Risk tolerance is highly personal, and is only truly tested when markets are under stress. Even the popular theory of loss aversion is now challenged, so you need to find the balance between risk and sleep.
Understanding your own biases and behaviours is even more important than learning about markets. Overcome four major cognitive biases that may be sabotaging your investing and recognise them in others.
Learn to make better decisions. We are human be-ings not human do-ings. We don’t always need to be active and switching investments often means selling and buying at exactly the wrong time.
Preferences revealed by actual investing behaviour are often different to preferences stated in surveys. Financial planners and super funds should use newer analyses that helps understand the discrepancies.
Many investors react poorly to market falls, although they should be accepted as frequent and part of investing. It’s best to know how you respond to your behavioural biases, and prepare for them in advance.
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.