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26 December 2024
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It's been a golden period for investing for those willing to take some risk. Australia has experienced six straight years when everything went up, and this has never happened before in history.
In 1993, researchers in the US studied the phenomenon of winning stocks continuing to outperform losing stocks. Using both long and short positions one could theoretically outperform the market on a regular basis.
Elroy Dimson maintains the most comprehensive collection of global asset class data (from 1900) and is a leading authority on the history of financial markets. We find out how the numbers inform his own views on investing.
Obviously it’s best to sell high and buy low, but in the irrational world of stock markets, the past may offer little guide to the future. The most we can realistically expect is to learn how to tilt the odds in our favour.
Future returns from different asset classes are always uncertain and subject to contrary forecasts, but there are useful lessons from the past. As Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest, "What is past is prologue."
The arithmetic mean of the annual returns of the ASX/S&P200 since 1980 is 13.9% per annum, while the geometric mean is 11.6% per annum. This is an annual 2.3% gap. Which returns have you been watching?
It’s with heavy hearts that we announce Firstlinks’ co-founder and former Managing Editor, Graham Hand, has died aged 66. Graham was a legendary figure in the finance industry and here are three tributes to him.
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 Future Fund's original purpose was to meet the unfunded liabilities of Commonwealth defined benefit schemes. These liabilities have ballooned to an estimated $290 billion and taxpayers continue to be treated like fools.
ASFA provides a key guide for how much you will need to live on in retirement. Unfortunately it has many deficiencies, and the averages don't tell the full story of the growing gender superannuation gap.
The Big Four banks have had an extraordinary run and it’s left income investors with a conundrum: to stick with them even though they now offer relatively low dividend yields and limited growth prospects or to look elsewhere.
A triple headwind has seen Australia's biggest LIC swing to a 10% discount and scuppered its relative performance. Management was bullish in an interview with Firstlinks, but is the discount ever likely to close?