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28 April 2024
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Treasury's consultation into the retirement phase of superannuation is generating a lot of interest. This submission to the consultation outlines the key financial risks to an individual’s standard of living in retirement.
Bitcoin has seemingly gone mainstream with approval for the first U.S. ETFs that can directly invest in the cryptocurrency. Should investors incorporate Bitcoin into their portfolios as a strategic part of long-term allocations?
Everyone including investors needs to evolve to get better. Here are five steps to improve your investment toolkit, including thinking probabilistically, running your own race, and measuring yourself objectively.
Portfolio construction requires actions, not just words, based on expected returns, volatility and correlations. We have not seen sufficient pain to believe we are at the bottom of the equity cycle.
Wealth accumulation has four main drivers. Evaluating long-term investment risk requires shifting the focus on shorter-term losses and volatility towards failure to achieve long-term objectives.
Savers are making small decision after small decision that leads them away from investing and closer to outright speculating. Time will tell if this ends in a bloody climax or we all live happily ever after.
Risk isn’t something to be avoided altogether. To achieve returns beyond the government bond rate, some level of risk must be accepted. Assessing which risks to take and calibrating them is the investor's challenge.
Investors often overlook the capital risk in high-yielding stocks. It's better to ensure capital grows and investors can sell a portion each year to make up for the shortfall in income from dividends.
Investing in a traditional index can be compared with taking the main road to a destination, but if you know the backroads and traffic conditions, you coud reach your goal quicker.
While franking credits attached to Australian equity dividends can be a meaningful source of extra returns, a deliberate tilt towards franking can also introduce significant unwanted risks into the portfolio.
To avoid retreating from making investment decisions during uncertainty, investors are compelled to rely on 'rules of thumb' to guide them in decision-making. Here are many of the more popular commonly-used rules.
The worldwide trend to populism loosens fiscal restraint, leading to asset price inflation and forcing investors to focus on a range of low probability but potentially material risks.
The ATO has released all the superannuation rates and thresholds that will apply from 1 July 2024. Here's what’s changing and what’s not, and some key considerations and opportunities in the lead up to 30 June and beyond.
Life has radically shifted with my brain cancer, and I don’t know if it will ever be the same again. After decades of writing and a dozen years with Firstlinks, I still want to contribute, but exactly how and when I do that is unclear.
Australia will have 3.7 million more people in a decade's time, though the growth won't be evenly distributed. Over 85s will see the fastest growth, while the number of younger people will barely rise.
Being rich is having a high-paying job and accumulating fancy houses and cars, while being wealthy is owning assets that provide passive income, as well as freedom and flexibility. Knowing the difference can reframe your life.
Investor disgust, consolidation, de-listings, price discounts, activist investors entering - it’s what typically happens at business cycle troughs, and it’s happening to LICs now. That may present a potential opportunity.
The $3 million super tax will capture retired, and soon to retire, public servants and politicians who are members of defined benefit superannuation schemes. Lobbying efforts for exemptions to the tax are intensifying.