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21 January 2025
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Borrowing to invest provides greater exposure to the share market and its potential gains or losses, as well as more associated franking credits. However, there are additional risks and costs to consider.
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.
Financial leverage is already built into many real estate funds and companies, and borrowing even more to invest can produce spectacular results - on both the upside and the downside.
How could a managed fund lose 96.5% of its value and then gain 767%, to become both the worst and best performing fund in Australia? From financial crisis to recovery, the answer is in the timing and the structure.
The use of leverage within SMSFs has come under heavy scrutiny lately with strong arguments for and against. Some forms of 'protected' gearing can help manage risk, demonstrating that not all gearing is the same.
Where possible, we should be saving more, whether it's for retirement or a rainy day, but our human psyche seems to work against us. The key is to put money aside first and make the payments automatic.
In the financial and economic world, we use medians and averages to assess our position and make decisions about the future. But as each individual is different, aggregated statistics aren't always useful.
How well must the market perform for a geared portfolio to deliver better returns than a normal, ungeared portfolio? Or put another way, if the market index rises or falls 10%, how much will a geared strategy change in value?
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.