Given the events of the last week, it feels like performance for January is largely irrelevant. The headline is that the US market is down 10%+ from its peak a few short weeks ago, punctuated by two ~4% down days. But, the headline doesn’t mention the rapid rise in January, or that for Australian ...

In June 2007, two relatively obscure Bear Stearns mortgage funds closed. With the benefit of hindsight, this was the start of a wave of mortgage defaults that heralded the start of the financial crisis. In October 1987, a stock market correction turned into a rout as a trading strategy called ...

With markets in free fall over the past two days, the question for investors is what to do? Here is a quick list of things that I go through in market downturns: 1. Don't panic - assess the situation rationally. Retail investors have a distinct tendency to buy when markets have risen and sell when ...

Damien Klassen, David Llewellyn Smith and Tim Fuller run through some keys areas under consideration as the Trump boom moves into its 2nd year.

Some Coalition in-fighting on electric cars and a new electric "Black Cab" in London caught my eye overnight and given our investment interest in electric cars I thought it worth an update on the investment arithmetic. Electric Vehicle investment numbers Of more interest, given our view that ...

Good news: Stock selection continues to support performance with our international portfolio outperforming a falling world market. Bad news: Statistically, December was the worst month so far for our Tactical Portfolios. Perspective: A 3-day fall in global shares (priced in AUD) between Christmas ...

I wanted to follow up on Jeremy Grantham's comments from yesterday and run through some of GMO’s asset allocation views from the perspective of an Australian investor. Jeremy Grantham & Co. at GMO have put out two thoughtful (as always) pieces in the last 3 weeks. I rate the team there highly ...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) put out a white paper Friday titled “Credit Booms—Is China Different?” The answer? Not in any meaningful way. Here are some selective quotes and charts (the yellow notes are my comments

Richard Bookstaber recently put out an interesting post on sectors that he thought had problems on a 30-40 year view. Richard is the author of a number of good finance books - I liked A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation and I have his new one The ...

A few companies have come out recently talking about the effect of Trump tax cuts and flagging large losses/write-downs. From the FT: