Australian capital city home prices fell 0.2% in March, their fifth monthly fall in a row. This has brought annual growth down to 0.8% from 11.4% in May last year. Most of the recent weakness relates to Sydney and to a less extent Melbourne. Show More
Dividend lovers: we’re witnessing a bit of a changing of the guard when it comes to the performance of ASX listed companies. Financials and in particular banks – where investors have traditionally looked for their sustainable dividend growth – are beginning to be threatened for the mantle of sustainable dividend... Show More
On average, companies in the top 10 per cent of expected dividend yield deliver negative earnings growth, negative dividend growth and underperform the market over time, our analysis suggests. To find the companies with genuinely sustainable dividends, you need to dig much deeper than these simple historical measures. Show More
For the last few years the Australian economy has been meandering between 2-3% growth. This remained the case through last year with December quarter GDP up just 0.4%, and annual growth of 2.4% as a bounce a year ago dropped out. In the quarter growth was helped by consumer spending... Show More
If Australia has an Achille’s heal it’s the high and still rising level of household debt that has gone hand in hand with the surge in house prices relative to incomes. Whereas several comparable countries have seen their household debt to income ratios pull back a bit since the Global... Show More
Global listed real estate has been enjoying a favourable outlook, supported by historically-low interest rates and improving economic sentiment. Here are three themes that we’re expecting to perform particularly well during the year due to their exposure to long-term secular growth trends. Show More
I’m going out on a limb and calling it now: 2018 will be the year of the unloved asset. In particular, investors in the oil and the energy sector will be well placed for a reasonably strong bounce back in the first half of this year, a shift that’s already... Show More
While it makes sense for individual investors to look to institutions for cues and clues to inform how they invest – or at least how they think about the world they invest in – sometimes it really doesn’t. Show More
The pace of technological inventions and improvements continues to grow but anxiety and fear around the impact of these changes to jobs is lifting even more. The focus of new technology in the market this year has been around “machine learning”, which is a subsect of artificial intelligence that deals... Show More
A common narrative on the Australian housing market is that it’s in a giant speculative bubble propelled by tax breaks, low interest rates and “liar loans” that have led to massive mortgage stress and that it’s all about to go bust, bringing down the banks and the economy with it.... Show More
