Markets

It’s every Australian’s dream to win a division one jackpot. While your odds of that are pretty slim, you can now benefit from lotteries in another way. Last week The Lottery Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLC) – which owns brands including Tattslotto, Powerball and Ozlotto in addition to Keno outlets – was listed as a standalone…

The central bank expects house price growth to ease this year and house prices are already falling in Sydney and Melbourne; economists expect that price weakness will spread to other cities, which may limit the number of official interest rate rises this year that are needed to tame inflation. According to the Reserve Bank of…

Thanks to the rapid uptake in ‘green’ ESG funds by the wholesale and retail investment community, growth in clean and renewable energy is starting to bend the emissions curve. Yes, progress is being made; but nowhere near the required rate to prevent global temperatures from rising past a safe limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Far…

Jeremy Grantham’s “wild rumpus” appears to have well and truly begun. But it might only be the beginning of a gloomy period for markets. Jeremy Grantham, chief investment strategist of GMO and part-time prophet of doom, has been unusually quiet of late. One would expect the severe market dislocation we’ve been experiencing since the start…

At our core, almost every investor feels like a contrarian at some point in time. It is only natural to see value in something that has fallen significantly in a short period of time. And to be honest, I must have considered buying the leveraged Nasdaq ETF at least 10 times in the last few…

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,…

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…

In the US, corporate earnings season is in full swing, and it couldn’t come at a worse time. Investors are fleeing away from risk and to safety putting the market in a bearish unforgiving mood. Companies that have missed expectations have been absolutely smashed. According to FactSet, 70 per cent of S&P500 companies that have…

After months of central banks kicking the can down the road, inflation is beginning to entrench itself. Businesses are reporting rising input prices. Households are being hit with bigger bills. And markets continue to swing wildly. Here are five ASX shares to protect your portfolio from inflation. Supermarkets don’t exactly scream sexy, exciting, or invest…

Stockbroker and wealth manager Morgans has released its “best ideas” paper, which outlines the broker’s best ideas offering the highest risk-adjusted returns over a 12-month timeframe supported by a higher-than-average level of confidence. They are also the broker’s most preferred sector exposures. Here are six of its best picks: Wesfarmers (ASX:WES) – Large-cap idea –…

One of the more interesting and powerful implications of the pandemic, relating to investment markets at least, is the velocity at which every new piece of news or data is priced-into markets. We only need to look back at the events of March and April 2020 to be reminded that we experienced both the fastest…

The first quarter of 2022 was likely the most difficult period in most financial professional’s career. With the majority of investors and asset allocators having only seen market corrections recover quickly, the events of February 2022 resulted in the worst period for both bond markets and the traditional ‘balanced’ portfolio in history. Outside of Ukraine,…