The MB Fund rock-n-roll thunder tour rolls into Sydney tonight. The Brisbane and Adelaide legs left screaming teens prostrate on the tarmac… OK, not really, but they were very well received with lively discussion on the prospects for house prices, the Australian dollar, interest rates, bitcoin, the economy, shares, population and the political economy. It was terrific
Apologies for light posting this morning. I’m fresh off the plane from Brisvegas where the MB Fund rock-n-roll thunder tour performed last night. Thanks everyone for coming. It was great to meet you and another round of terrific discussion. Next it is on to Sydney where we plan to tear the financial market towers from
I’m freshly returned from Adelaide where last night we kicked off the MB Fund national rock-n-roll thunder tour. It was a splendid evening running an hour over time with lively presentations and discussion across typical MB policy and investment territory. It was terrific to meet MB readers and commenters in person and there were no
A reminder that if you’re in Adelaide tomorrow night your social standing is at risk if you miss the hottest event since The Beatles visited in 1964. Presentations will include: LVO dishing dirt on the disaster that is mainstream economics; DLS dishing dirt on the disaster that is market economics; DK on how to make a
There was another entry into the academic statistical war that makes up the debate between whether asset allocation or stock selection is more important from ReSolve Asset Management recently. The full paper is technical, full of principle component analysis and the discussion of the appropriate correlations to use between markets (if that sort of thing appeals
Global reporting season was pretty decent at a headline level – there are lots of more interesting things happening at a sector and stock level, but I’ll get into that later on in the week.
The chances are that you read Macrobusiness for no-nonsense, unbiased insight into the most pertinent issues in today’s macroeconomic climate. So do over 120,000 other people around the world per month. Now you have a chance to meet the team in person, talk investments, hear first hand about how the popular blog was founded, how
Investing can be a volatile ride, the last few days have reminded us. The last few days have also reminded us why holding international equities is often beneficial for Australian investors – the Australian dollar acts as a shock absorber on returns when volatility hits, which is exactly the opposite effect that international investors get investing
Given: (1) a spike in the AUD to 80c vs the USD (2) an increase in the interest in our international fund and (3) that our tactical asset allocation portfolios remain heavily overweight international, I thought it worth expanding on our international equities portfolio and its exposures. It’s a tough time to be making investment
The biggest risk to the thoughts I have presented on energy costs are the assumptions about the cost of batteries. Battery costs have been shrinking at 20% per annum for the last few years. If that cost improvement continues for the next 5-10 years then disruption for the energy sector will have arrived. If it
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, so are we going to let Graham Hand toss a few rocks for us at of one of the larger players in the online superannuation space, Spaceship: Spaceship recently said it had almost reached $100 million under management, an incredible amount for a startup. On 1 June 2017, The Australian
Last week we got an update from the US EIA on the growing differential between electricity prices throughout the day – the spread is now out to $45/mWh between prices at 1pm and prices at 8pm: Source: EIA Given this, it is worth a quick update of where prices stand in our journey to energy
Quick chart from the Wall Street Journal / BMI overnight asking the question: Are energy stocks undervalued? The answer is no. No, they aren’t. And even if oil stocks were undervalued this is precisely the wrong valuation chart to look at. I’m not saying the Price to Book ratio shown above won’t rise –
Bloomberg ran a story this week about conflicts of interest in the robo-advice world with a few choice digs: Some of the big banks’ new algorithmic programs may favor funds from companies that pay the banks millions of dollars for access to their wealthy clients. … There’s a risk that the banks’ robo programs could
Close watchers of Macrobusiness will be aware that after a year of set-up we recently launched a fund to implement the macroeconomic themes for readers in the market. When putting together an offer like this to such a broad readership, there are always going to be surprises. One area that offered such a surprise is the
There are a few studies that show that the richer you are the better your investment returns – Thomas Piketty the French economist is probably the most well-known author in this space. A recent Vox article digs into these returns using detailed Swedish data and essentially finds the same thing. The top 5-10% of households
There is sometimes confusion about the returns available on property in a self-managed super fund (SMSF) – especially as the mathematics starts to get confusing with relative rates of return, real vs nominal and opportunity cost vs risk, before tax and after tax returns. But I have a much easier way to explain why it
Very. But not as much as it could get to: My own view is that the dollar has further to rise, perhaps into the 82-83 cents range. It’s being driven by USD weakness linked to falling oil and fading fiscal hopes, plus China holding up better than markets thought through its tightening, expressed most obviously
Nice video here of Westpac’s Justin Smirk on the outlook for China, iron ore and the Australian dollar: Absolutely right. Westpac’s AUD fair value is already stretched and getting stretcheder: The MB Fund offers you the perfect vehicle to maximise returns via a temporary rise in the Aussie dollar in its pure international equities portfolio of 50 hand-picked stocks:
The Australian dollar kept on keeping on last night against both USD and EUR: Against EMs it was mixed: Gold caught a bid: Brent too: Base metals fell: Big miners were mixed: EM stocks took off: As high yield rebounded: US bonds were sold: And European spreads all but disappeared as bunds were bashed: Stocks
I’ve had a number of discussions with investors over the last few weeks about investing in the Macrobusiness fund versus “do it yourself” investing and thought it worth aggregating the discussions into a post. Part of what I want to do with the MacroBusiness fund is to de-mystify portfolio investing. Many parts of investing are
Some of you will already know but let’s make it official. The MacroBusiness Fund is open for business. This is the culmination of a decade long dream for some at MB so congratulations all around. Let’s begin with a description of what the fund is offering and how. There are six funds operating through the
Via the AFR today comes some serious chutzpah: Australia’s sharemarket could jump by as much two thirds over the next decade, underpinned by a booming superannuation sector and the nation’s status as a “growth haven”, according to a new report by Macquarie Research. Jason Todd, head of Australian macro-economic research at Macquarie, said Australia’s super
Readers will know that MB has a bearish three-stage bust outlook for Australian house prices. phase one is monetary authorities pulling up prices and triggering minor falls (in the east as well as west). We see a little more tightening as needed but we may already be there; phase two is fiscal authorities tightening on
Via the AFR: Australia’s most successful and well-known stock pickers are under pressure as active managers fail to perform and investors opt for the safety and certainty of passively managed index funds. More than three-quarters of active large cap equity funds in Australia underperformed the indices they are measured against in calendar 2016, according to S&P
