As Trump pressured China with trade wars, manufacturing indices around the world showed steady declines. I attribute this to falling business confidence, leading to weaker orders by businesses around the world. Show More

In the past quarter, we have seen a significant divergence between the performance of the US stock market compared to emerging markets and Europe. Donald Trump’s hard stance on tariffs and his trade wars have driven fear into emerging markets, especially China. Weakening manufacturing numbers in Europe, a populist five... Show More

Investors in self-managed super funds (SMSFs) don’t seem to ascribe to traditional approaches of modern portfolio theory. According to its architect, Harry Markowitz, investors can design an ‘optimal’ portfolio to maximise returns by taking on risk – and risk can be managed through diversification across asset classes. Show More

The year ahead might be more volatile than the last, as the world navigates through higher bond yields and rising inflation, but we think a good equity portfolio will outperform most other asset classes. Here I share some thoughts on specific companies, and the implications of a trade war, following... Show More

The pace of technological change never ceases to excite me – and I’ve been studying it for a while. I recently attended a Citigroup technology conference in New York with Thomas Rice, our technology expert, to examine the large strides Alphabet (Google) and IBM are making in artificial intelligence (AI)... Show More

Another financial year has gone by, with strong performance tailwinds helping to create some significant opportunities in markets around the world. As at 30 June 2017, the MSCI world index had risen 15%, with value stocks in a number of sectors benefitting from a market sentiment shift away from deflation... Show More

We have invested in businesses like Expedia, Yahoo and Qihoo in the past and we currently have 14% of our portfolio allocated to these types of businesses. We like these businesses as there is a clear tailwind out of traditional media expenditure towards digital media advertising. Companies that we invest... Show More

What an eventful quarter we have seen in equity markets. The election of Donald Trump has seen a significant rise in long term bond yields and a rotation out of bond proxies like utilities, real estate and consumer staples into sectors like financials that have been undervalued for quite some... Show More

I have decided to dedicate this newsletter to the US economy, given that our investments in the US represent close to 60% of the fund's portfolio. Despite the recent stock market correction, the US economy is growing nicely with US GDP growth revised upwards to 3.7% in the second quarter.... Show More

Everyone has been watching the eye-watering rise of the Chinese A-Share indices and the most recent 30%+ correction of the China Shenzhen A-Share Index. This index is up 62% year to date. It is interesting to note that since the 1st of August 2009, the China Shenzhen A Share... Show More

In this newsletter I decided to write to you about my recent trip to Europe. I travelled through many cities including Berlin, Rome, Paris, London, Tel Aviv and Istanbul. The last two aren't necessarily on most people's travel lists but are both very interesting cities with wonderful companies to invest... Show More

I thought I would dedicate this newsletter to an undervalued sector globally, financials. Interestingly while global banks seem to be very cheap and attractive opportunities, Australian banks are quite the opposite… I start to worry when I read about 300sqm knockdowns in Sydney selling for $2.7m, $1m over the reserve... Show More