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Last week’s market falls have fear and panic rising to their highest levels since the pandemic. The VIX Volatility index – the so-called “Fear Index” – hit 34.75 last Monday. At the start of the pandemic, the index hit 69.37 representing extreme volatility. During the GFC, the index hit 89.53.  There is, however, another “unconventional”…

Last week’s US Federal Reserve’s decision to increase interest rates by half a percentage point saw the Dow Jones Industrial Index tumble by 1,000 points (-3.12 percent). It also saw the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Luna, Solana, Cardano and Avalanche go into free fall. Bitcoin wiped around $100 billion from the combined crypto market…

Big name Chinese equities including Tencent, Alibaba and JD.com dominated global equity strategies until late 2020. Almost every well-known fund manager in the country had significant weightings to the region on the basis that it had continued to grow strongly during the pandemic and had a strong economic backdrop in the years to come. Naturally,…

To “Buy the Dip,” or not? There’s a lot of content out there on why this strategy is a bad one and how it traps investors. Done right however, this strategy is one of the few that can generate exponential returns.  Firstly, buying the dip is best done following a black swan event or total…

PEXA Group Ltd (ASX: PXA) is a relatively new listing on the ASX but has quickly risen to fame as one of its highest quality companies. The business owns the PEXA Exchange, which brings the Reserve Bank of Australia, state revenue offices, land registries, banks, buyers, sellers and conveyancers onto one digital platform to lodge…

“Guess who’s back? Travel’s back, baby,” says the MD of Webjet, John Guscic. And travel is back, borders are open, and people are travelling overseas. The online flight booking company is cash-flow positive and in a much better position than it was six months ago. According to brokers, this week’s FY22 result was an improvement…

Despite the media hype surrounding last week’s US rate hike, interest rates are going up but not as fast or as damaging as everyone thinks. The RBA upped rates for the first time in over 11 years by 25bps to 0.35 percent from 0.10 percent. Roughly a $65 a month increase, on a twenty-five year…

Morgans have released a summary of the key points from the recent bank reporting season. Of the banks that reported, Morgans says NAB was in line with consensus expectations, while ANZ and WBC beat consensus earnings expectations. Despite this, Morgans holds NAB as having the strongest 1H22 performance overall. NAB produced the strongest profit growth…

March stands out as being one of the most difficult periods for investors in a generation. On the one hand, bond markets send fixed income to its worst return in more decades, and on the other, equity markets were sold off broadly on valuation concerns as bond yields ended a forty-year downward trend. It is…

Grocery prices have soared in Australia, rising at a faster pace than the Consumer Price Index, which is benefitting the earnings of Coles and Woolworths. However, the boost could be temporary, with food inflation expected to moderate next year. The rise in inflation globally has exceeded wages growth, eroding households’ purchasing power. Lower income households…

“Patience is a virtue” may well be the best way to explain the performance of the Australian sharemarket in the March quarter. As the rest of the world, but particularly fast-growing technology stocks listed on the NASDAQ entered free fall, the local S&P/ASX200 benchmark bucked the global trend to deliver a return of 2.2 per…

Stablecoins are one type of cryptocurrency that is designed to maintain a fixed value over time. The value of a stablecoin is typically pegged to another asset class such as fiat currencies or precious metals. In this setup, one unit of the cryptocurrency typically equals one unit of the real currency. Unlike highly volatile cryptocurrencies…