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21 December 2024
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Just because a stock is cheap doesn't necessarily make it good value. This uses case studies in the tech sector to help identify when stocks trading on 30x earnings may be inexpensive and when others on 10x may be value traps.
Many assets have enjoyed a positive year, leaving some of them looking pricey. Here we compare valuations of cash, bonds, stocks, and property, and suggest where investors may be able to find opportunities.
For decades, cyclically adjusted P/E ratios have been a common and widely accepted gauge of market valuation. But as the financial landscape continues to evolve, so too must our tools for understanding it.
Investments in intangible assets are as crucial to many companies as investments in capital equipment. The different accounting treatment of these investments, however, weighs on reported earnings and could render ratios like P/E less useful for investors.
ASX market bulls point to corporate balance sheets and earnings, while bears highlight company valuations and persistently higher inflation. It's best to ignore short-term noise and focus on investing in quality companies.
For one Commonwealth Bank worth ~$200 billion, you can buy three of Europe's leading banks with much larger addressable markets. This is just one example of the extreme valuation divergences across global stock markets.
ASX blue-chip ResMed has been hammered due to concerns that new obesity drugs will reduce demand for its product. What are these drugs, how effective are they and what impact could they have on the sleep apnoea market?
Human beings are storytelling animals yet it’s the job of investors to separate truth from fiction. And the truth lies in numbers, the company earnings and the multiples attached to those earnings.
Stock prices are like email: distraction machines. With email, it distracts people from getting work done efficiently, while with stock prices, they distract investors from what really matters: the businesses underlying them.
Investment in the energy sector has dropped significantly but demand continues to rise. Higher prices normally trigger more spending and increased supply. If this is not the case, it creates investment opportunities.
A check on price chart action for dozens of favourite tech stocks shows how dramatic the rises and falls have been. Where to from here? There's better value but profits need to remain strong or prices will fall.
It is a tough time to be investing in growth stocks but there may be ways investors can take advantage of lower prices and be well positioned when the market and interest rates return to normality.
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.