Opinion

Montgomery Investment Management, the firm founded by tireless Australian ‘value’ manager Roger Montgomery, has had a busy start to 2021. Sometimes compared to the doyen of value investing, Warren Buffett, the firm’s focus on investing in “companies, not stocks” and seeking “intrinsic value” has made it difficult to generate returns in a growth-oriented and bubbly…

Cleanaway (ASX:CWY) is Australia’s largest garbage disposal company, providing waste, recycling, industrial and liquids services with a network of state-of-the-art facilities, transfer stations, engineered landfills, liquid treatment plants and refineries. Given what it does, it’s no surprise that Cleanaway is one of the rare companies that came out of the pandemic relatively unscathed. Pre-COVID, CWY…

You’ve probably heard of a company resorting to a ‘backdoor listing’ or a ‘reverse takeover’ or for US investors a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) instead of using the traditional IPO (front door) method to list on the ASX or other markets. Contrary to popular belief, the process is completely legitimate and a viable pathway…

It was an unfortunate end to earnings season if you were a technology or fast-growing company in Australia. A spike in bond rates, which could be considered both an expected and unexpected event by investors depending on your position, sending global markets into a tailspin; for a day at least. On the face of it,…

The exchange traded fund sector moved from strength to strength in 2020, seeing massive flows from retail and professional investors alike. They have also been among some of the best performing investments for the year. Yet with such a great diversity of opportunities available to even the most inexperienced investors, it has never been more…

Goldman Sachs this week released its latest crossover report, which seeks to identify the “most loved” and “unloved” stocks in the US. The report reviews the quarterly reports of some 507 US mutual (or “managed”) funds, representing US$2.7 trillion ($3.4 trillion) in assets under management, and compares these to the reports of 820 hedge funds,…

Dividend boom JB Hi-Fi (ASX: JBH) has done it again. A bumper result saw shares increase 2.5% at the time of writing, on the back of strong in-store and online growth in the Australian electronics market. The electronics retailer posted a first-half profit inline with market expectations, and pointed towards an optimistic second half. Total…

Last week, Beijing based short-selling activist firm J Capital launched a scathing report on Australian aerial imagery technology firm (and small cap darling) Nearmap (ASX: NEA), in the hope that it would trigger a sell-off so that it could profit handsomely from short positions in the company. The report titled “Afraid to Admit Failure” attacked…

“Am I worried about asset prices rising too quickly? At the moment, I don’t see anything that’s unsustainable”. That was RBA Governor Philip Lowe earlier this month, responding to a Parliamentary Committee’s intense questioning. The questions came after the RBA decided to double the QE (quantitative easing) program that just 18 months ago it suggested…

Don Ezra, a now-retired celebrity adviser in the institutional world, still offers his views, in blog form, on all sorts of issues facing retirees. Recently, he turned his attention to the possible growth stock bubble. In his series ‘Life after Full-time Work’ (link) Ezra admits that no-one knows when, nor if, the current record spread…

CBA (ASX:CBA) Result comes in neat and tidy Cash profit for HY of $3.89 billion, versus the analysts’ consensus expectation of $3.76 billion Strong balance sheet with $10 billion in excess capital Higher dividend and capital strength CBA shares are down in early trade despite posting a “beat” on cash earnings. The bank posted a…

Cannabidiol oil, more commonly referred to as CBD oil, received the green light from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for over-the-counter sales in Australian pharmacies from February 1.  It’s a big step in making CBD oil mainstream. Products containing up to 150mg of cannabidiol (CBD) will now be able to be sold by pharmacists without…