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22 January 2025
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Trump's election has turbocharged US equities, but can that outperformance continue? Expensive valuations, rising bond yields, and a potential narrowing of EPS growth versus the rest of the world, are risks.
The past three years seem representative of the history of stock returns: two steps forward and one step back. It provides important lessons about how you should prepare your investment portfolio for future market outcomes.
Investors should prepare for a decade of returns below historical averages for both stocks and bonds. Over the next decade, equity returns may be tiny compared with the lofty double-digit returns of recent years.
It's easy to find eminent market experts with completely opposite views on the market at any moment. View the forecasts of investment gurus for what they are: guesstimates. Only you can decide what's right for you.
A close inspection of Reserve Bank Board minutes, the implications of US Fed moves, the way unemployment is measured and how monetary policy is set add up to a picture of further rate cuts.
Exogenous factors like macro changes and weather can affect a company’s short-term profits. Management often blames uncontrollable factors for earnings downgrades but rarely owns up to a fortuitous tailwind.
The market's fixation with whether companies are meeting, exceeding, or falling short of quarterly financial targets is inhibiting market efficiency. Investors would do better focussing on long-term prospects.
There are insightful parallels between the bookmaking industry and the financial services sector, and it would help if market analysts and fund researchers assigned odds to their predictions.
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.
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.
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.
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.