The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut interest rates by 0.25% to 1.25% in June, ending a 33-month streak of inaction – the longest in RBA history.

Is the recent collapse in the share price of Company ABC a buying opportunity (noise), or symptomatic of underlying change in the company’s prospects (meaning)?

The past 12-months have marked a turning point for global equity markets, as they experienced the first retraction in Price-Earnings (PE) multiples since 2011.

Interest-Bearing Securities, or Bonds, provide a key source of income and portfolio ballast to any asset allocation, an importance that has been highlighted by the market turmoil of 2018.

The listed property (A-REIT) market as a whole experienced a difficult 2018 as the spectre of higher rates early in the year, contracted earnings multiples.

2018 has been a year of recalibration by market participants, after the goldilocks euphoria of 2017 – where all asset classes simultaneously rose.

Since the Global Financial Crisis, global banks have stepped back from lending to corporates as they adapt to the litany of regulatory changes and higher capital requirements.

At the end of a bull market, when the gains have been disproportionately shared between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, it is not unusual for governments to seek to interfere in an otherwise effectively functioning market.

Quantitative easing and falling interest rates have been universally good for the holders of capital and investors. The reversal of this process is unlikely to be beneficial for investors and holds the potential to unwind the windfalls that investors have received through re-rating.

12-months ago global growth reached a post-recession peak as we experienced synchronised global growth across many different countries.

The Australian economy is expanding, with GDP of 3.4% and unemployment at 5.0%. This growth has supported the increased revenues of the ganders (Commonwealth and State Governments)... but what about the geese (households)?

After nearly a decade of increasingly easy monetary policy, characterised by steadily declining central bank interest rates and quantitative easing – the printing of money to buy long-term bonds with the intent of reducing long-term yields – the major central banks around the world have started to tighten monetary policy. 

Properly diversifying your investment pool not only means diversification at an asset class level but also diversifying individual exposures at the security level.

Retail sales for July were unchanged from June, going against hopes for a rise of 0.3%. Whilst only a monthly statistical read, it joins a number of poor monthly reads. This, combined with a fall of 0.6% in the ANZ Job Ads Survey in August, now indicates a headwind to further falls in the employment rate.

Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google are unquestionably (tech) powerhouses of our times. There is a lot to like about the FANG business strategies, but do their valuation and future business performance assumptions stack up?

As we approach the 10th anniversary of the current bull market, we take a look at current and historical market conditions to assess how much longer this bull market can last.

The recent equity market gyrations over the last 10 days heralds the end to Goldilocks equity volatility, of which the hallmark has been overly-benign volatility for the last five years.