
The world is going to end but you can save yourself by subscribing to… These self-help newsletters, websites and email lists are getting a little bit carried away with themselves.
A quick look at the Australian sharemarket reveals a few interesting trends of late. Here is my take on some of the ‘flavour of the month’ trends. Remember the Great Disclaimer – Nothing in this post or on this site is to be considered personal advice. It is information and observations of a general nature…
Here is our first Traders’ Update for 2011. As has been the case since the onset of the Global Financial Crisis, the world of investment is dominated by activities of speculators and traders. That is, investors and institutions looking to buy and sell a range of securities over the short term to speculate on price movements rather than…
Why do markets go up? Why do markets go down? What impact do changes have on expectations for the future? Will gold move above $2,000 an ounce? Will Greece default on its sovereign debt? Will the Chinese property market bubble burst? There are so many unknowns in the world today that the arena of investment…
An interesting news feed passed across my screen this morning (courtesy RWE AusBusiness News; via Coretrading market software). It seems that wages in the three months to February grew by 1.1%. Frankly, even i yawned at that. However, the year-on-year figures are where the real interest begins. It seems that in the year to February, AWOTE…
The recent market falls are interesting in light of the very bouyant market conditions. That is, credit is more available than it has been for some time, global volatility measures are down considerably on where they were during the Global Financial Crisis, trade has lifted considerably (with large year-on-year increases), and central governments have acted…
From a financial advisors’ point of view, a lot of the current debate on the value of advice is more than a little bemusing. Over many years the role of advisor has evolved from what was predominantly an insurance advice role (~40 years ago) through superannuation advisor (~30 years ago), investment advisor (~20 years ago)…