The assumption that Amazon would sweep away all retailers that stand before it resulted in many US retailers being sold down. This hysteria created some interesting opportunities in the retail segment, one of which is Dollar General. Show More
investment
What next for Snapchat? After a disastrous earnings call, the stock fell 25% and came within 25c of breaching its issue price of US$17. Those that didn’t take the opportunity, brief though it was, to sell at US$24 might be feeling nervous. It is hovering around US$20 now, following the... Show More
Tesla blew through car production expectations this quarter – overnight it released production figures showing it had made just over 25,000 vehicles by 31 March – putting it on track to make 500,000 cars by 2018, according to the major shareholder, Elon Musk. The stock price is up 28% since... Show More
The Apple shareprice popped 39% in the past year, including almost 10% following the result. This has less to do with the underlying numbers, which actually weren’t that great (more on that later), but is more about excitement around the iPhone 8, which will be released for the tenth anniversary... Show More
Last Thursday night, the US NFL screened for the first time on what is effectively ‘Twitter TV’ - by which I mean a full live CBS broadcast of the game integrated into the Twitter feed on the phone, and cast straight to the lounge room tv. Show More
With the controversy around the listing of Guvera raging, it is useful to take a close look at what a successful company listing in the digital space looks like. First, a little about Guvera. Show More
Apologies for my long hiatus, it has been hard to find interesting, reasonably valued stocks. Blackwall Property Funds (BWF) manage and service ~$600m of properties for various property vehicles. What’s exciting is they are in the early rollout phase of their shared office product ‘WOTSO Workspaces’. The strategy is to... Show More
Why is it so important to hold a portion of your investments offshore? Markets have been selling off heavily in the past few weeks - the ASX is off 8% and the S&P500 is off 10%. The Australian dollar, which as a commodity currency goes down when China and resources... Show More
It’s not about interest rates, or dividends or technical trends or any of the other hyped nonsense which passes for commentary, and last night we had proof. Global indices fell, mostly as a result of the realisation that if commodity prices remain low mining dividends are under threat. Meanwhile, the... Show More
Malcolm Turnbull is absolutely right to be throwing the switch to innovation – Australia is not going to mine or bank its way into an improvement in its long term growth prospects, at least not with the existing models. But there needs to be some circumspection around innovation investment, because... Show More
The world has been very nervous about China in the past two months, with a series of weak data prints (lowest quarter industrial sector growth in 20 years at 5.8%, bearish PMI numbers etc) leading to significant falls in the Chinese stock market. Show More
The US reporting season, which is currently in full swing, has dramatically illustrated the difference in the performance of traditional blue chip Australian companies relative to those that are disrupting them. Show More
Investing is not about "knowing" the future. It's about deciding what risks you feel comfortable with. Two events last week highlighted this very truth about investing and risk. One was the announcement by Orica (result below expectations plus impairment charges), the second one was the capital raising by ANZ Bank... Show More
Just when you thought it was safe to invest in any disruptive company, Silicon Valley gets a bad case of the jitters with the effective shuttering of two moderately high-profile start-up properties – Homejoy (pictured, a home-help business) and GigaOm, a blog about technology news. The dividing line at present... Show More
The take out from last week's Q1 GDP report was the weakness apparent in household consumption. Combined with the poor 2015/16 Capex print the week before, the GDP report highlighted that the risks to the outlook for the Australian economy and the RBA policy outlook are to the downside. Key... Show More
MIT last week released footage of a “dog” robot that could run at 8km/hour and negotiate hurdles – it has been referred to as a ‘terrifying cheetah’ (watch it on our website and read the full article here http://www.loftuspeak.com.au/players-line-up-to-take-on-googles-self-driving-car-published-afr-3-june-2015/ ). The technology to do this is awesome, involving object recognition... Show More
US labour market statistics continue to imply a robust expansion but the data on manufacturers new orders released last week showing the seventh consecutive monthly decline are cause for concern about the growth momentum. Additional pressures on already weak investment spending have been mounting. The fall in oil prices has... Show More
Google exploded its mobile telco hand grenade overnight, offering a US$20/month plan which will disrupt the big mobile operators in the US (especially ATT and Verizon). This from the Googleblog: “Project Fi works to get technology out of the way so you can communicate through whichever network type and device... Show More
The impending release of Australian retail sales data tomorrow will put the focus on our listed retailers and help set the scene for next month's reporting season. But there's one stock with more to prove come February. Economists are forecasting a 0.2% rise in retail spending for the month of November... Show More
Apple through US$102 on large-screen iPhone speculation. Apple's Alien vs Predator future? The two scariest monsters ever realised on film were the Alien queen (from Alien) and the Predator (from The Predator). The former, which was referred to as a xenomorph, laid an egg inside its victim that later busted... Show More
