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22 December 2024
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Berkshire Hathaway’s third quarter earnings update reveals Buffett is selling stocks and building record cash reserves. Here’s a look at his track record in calling market tops and whether you should follow his lead and dial down risk.
Risk in portfolios has dramatically increased as time horizons have shortened and investors have piled into equities. It's resulted in a growing disconnect between what investors need and what the financial industry is delivering.
Treasury's consultation into the retirement phase of superannuation is generating a lot of interest. This submission to the consultation outlines the key financial risks to an individual’s standard of living in retirement.
Bitcoin has seemingly gone mainstream with approval for the first U.S. ETFs that can directly invest in the cryptocurrency. Should investors incorporate Bitcoin into their portfolios as a strategic part of long-term allocations?
Everyone including investors needs to evolve to get better. Here are five steps to improve your investment toolkit, including thinking probabilistically, running your own race, and measuring yourself objectively.
Portfolio construction requires actions, not just words, based on expected returns, volatility and correlations. We have not seen sufficient pain to believe we are at the bottom of the equity cycle.
Wealth accumulation has four main drivers. Evaluating long-term investment risk requires shifting the focus on shorter-term losses and volatility towards failure to achieve long-term objectives.
Savers are making small decision after small decision that leads them away from investing and closer to outright speculating. Time will tell if this ends in a bloody climax or we all live happily ever after.
Risk isn’t something to be avoided altogether. To achieve returns beyond the government bond rate, some level of risk must be accepted. Assessing which risks to take and calibrating them is the investor's challenge.
Investors often overlook the capital risk in high-yielding stocks. It's better to ensure capital grows and investors can sell a portion each year to make up for the shortfall in income from dividends.
Investing in a traditional index can be compared with taking the main road to a destination, but if you know the backroads and traffic conditions, you coud reach your goal quicker.
While franking credits attached to Australian equity dividends can be a meaningful source of extra returns, a deliberate tilt towards franking can also introduce significant unwanted risks into the portfolio.
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.
Australia is in the early throes of an intergenerational wealth transfer worth an estimated $3.5 trillion. Here's a case study highlighting some of the challenges with transferring wealth between generations.
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.