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21 January 2025
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Rebalacing can feel counterintuitive as you sell your winners and buy more losers. A reasonable compromise is to rebalance every 12 months, which might offer capital gains tax advantages.
Conventional wisdom was that acting in accordance with ethical principles involved a trade-off against portfolio returns. The evidence is that is not the case, and there are easy ways to support your principles.
The threat of Labor denying franking credit refunds led some investors to sell hybrids, widening their margins, which created investment opportunities for those willing to look past the immediate announcement.
Thematic trend investors relies more on recognising how the world is changing over the long term, and finding sectors that will benefit, rather than the more cyclical approach of picking short-term winners.
In the US, ETFs represent about 16% of the entire managed fund space, but in Australia, it is only 1.5%. With many strategies available including Active ETFs, the growth outlook is strong.
ETFs reached over $40 billion by the end of 2018, with international equities ranked first for net flows, and a rapid growth in fixed income products. Cap-weighted indexes dominated but smart beta is gaining ground.
Guest Editor, Alex Vynokur, has watched the active versus passive debate for many years, and although he runs an ETF business, he sees a role for both investment techniques in most portfolios.
Most portfolios will benefit from a mix of passive and active strategies, as there are market conditions where one might do better than the other. ETFs now cover a wide range of structures, not only indexing.
Devices connected to the internet, not just phones and laptops, are increasingly part of everyday life. Soon, it will be our lights and doorbells, and later, almost everything, with more risk of hacking.
Most S&P500 companies are doing well with recent reported earnings above expectations. In the tech sector, the Big Five (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet) have also diversified their income sources.
The future of ETFs appears strong as the millennials increase their share of the investment pie, and the majority of financial advisers now comfortable with ETFs.
ETFs are seeing the growth in popularity in Australia that overseas markets have experienced for many years, and they could reach $50 billion by the end of 2018. What will drive it?
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.