As Warren Buffet put it best: “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get”. And just as an individual share price can be disaggregated into earnings per share (EPS) times its PE ratio, the same thing can be done at a market index level - as we discuss... Show More
I’ve been fascinated by the soaring trajectory of some of our smaller ‘new age’ companies – like A2M, PushPay, Afterpay and Kogan – whose share prices have rallied over 600 per cent since 2017. Show More
This week it's Commodities, specifically an aggregate view of commodities and a look at valuations. Commodities as an asset class rose from relative obscurity to become a popular addition to portfolios by the more innovative asset allocators in the last 10-15 years. Although the "commodities supercycle" perhaps overstated some of... Show More
Five years is a long time in financial markets. Five years ago, the ASX 200 was just hitting 5,000 points for the first time since Lehman’s collapse, US stocks were being “whipsawed” by instability concerns in Italy, and Dick Smith Electronics was getting ready to debut on the ASX. Show More
Following its 5% to 10% miss on consensus earnings for 1H, Domino’s fell by around 15% from peak to trough last week. The market has little tolerance for earnings misses from growth stocks. Even after the price decline, the stock is still trading on well above 20 times 12 month... Show More
When we go into periods of big volatility like this, it is the amount of liquidity in the US wholesale system that decides how long that period of volatility will last. I think this period will last weeks rather than days. I think by the time we get to the... Show More
Portfolio Manager Gerald Stack discusses the role that sovereign risk plays when selecting infrastructure stocks, US President Donald Trump’s proposed plans for infrastructure and whether the rally in infrastructure stocks is stretching valuations. Show More
We asked a panel of portfolio managers how they are thinking about investing in today's richly valued market. Specifically: what attributes they are seeking, and how they are avoiding biases. Steve Johnson offers some essential reading, Tim Kelley focuses on capital preservation, and Alex Pollak cites four key characteristics. Show More
The global economy is now more than seven years into a durable but modest expansion. But what will happen when the cyclical tailwind that began last summer fades? And how will key policies in the world’s major economies pivot in response to both rising populist pressures and diminishing returns from... Show More
Investment legend Peter Lynch, who ran Fidelity’s Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990 with extraordinary success, coined the term “ten-bagger” to describe his really big winners. Finding investment ten-baggers, or even ones that merely double or triple in value, is certainly a tantalising prospect and most investors are behaviorally hardwired... Show More
One of my earliest (and fondest) memories of my time at Fidelity is the new analyst induction program. During my first year, in 2004, some 35 of us new joiners congregated in Boston for training and to meet some of the most senior portfolio managers. The highlight for me was... Show More
In Friday’s edition of the Summer Series, Roger Montgomery explained in his Whitepaper https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/34157 the difficulty of the task that investors face in avoiding a range of biases that threaten their returns. Despite our desire to be rational decision makers, our ‘humanness’ conspires against us and we engage in things... Show More
The five largest companies by market cap in the world are all technology companies. They have a combined market cap of ~$2 Trillion and combined revenues of $530 Billion over the last 12 months. CB Insights data shows that VC-backed technology companies are on track to raise >$100 Billion this... Show More
In The AFR I explain why I have lifted the cash weights in my own portfolios from ~15% in February to ~50% today and investigate whether there are any cheap asset-classes left after global risk-free rates have been crushed to the lowest levels in human history. I conclude that Australian... Show More
On Wednesday last week the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported that inflation for the June quarter was 0.4%, down from 1% in 2015. This is watched very closely by the market, as it is a key measure used by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in making their decision... Show More
Ratios are shortcuts for understanding value – sometimes they enlighten and sometimes they deceive. At Forager, we apply relevant ratios or mental models to a business in order to understand it better. Different tools for different companies must be used depending on the type of business we are researching. Like... Show More
At the heart of the resource sector regulatory regime is the JORC Code and the role of the so-called competent person. Show More
As central banks conspire to drive down interest rates, both short-term and long-term, the question of valuation becomes an increasingly difficult one. One of the key inputs to valuation is known as the ‘risk-free rate’, and is generally based on long-term bond yields. As Quantitative Easing and negative interest rates... Show More
When we started the Ausbil MicroCap Fund in February 2010, we missed the bottom by about 12 months but in hindsight, it was still a fantastic time to start a smaller companies fund. Valuation multiples ranged from 8-12x PE and earnings were recovering so growth looked better than it does... Show More
Interest rates represent the time value of money or the rate at which people are prepared to trade off present for future consumption. It significantly impacts the value of equities, being the present value of future cash flows. To the extent that lower bond yields represent lower inflation or weaker... Show More