Our take on the current market volatility
Commsec’s Tom Piotrowski interviews our Chief Investment Officer, Andrew Macken, about the current market volatility. Andrew shares his analysis of the current economic scenario in the wake of Brexit, US-China relations and various other macro economic factors. Have a look at the video now to gain some valuable insights by clicking here.
As the range gets wider, investing gets harder
There are lots of things that could happen; but only one thing that will happen. This is one of the better articulations out there of the concept of risk. Understanding risk is at the core of any investment because substantially all investments could result in a range of possible outcomes. Sometimes that range is narrow […]
Customers Don’t Grow on Trees
Firms, at their core, sell products and/or services to customers. Often it costs money to build awareness of the product or service you’re selling, sometimes small sums, sometimes large. It’s useful to think of this through the lens of a metric called customer acquisition cost (CAC). We will look at why this calculation is both […]
The Yield Paradox
It is well known that interest rates and bond yields are extremely low, so-low in fact that some of the world’s largest countries (Germany, France, Japan) and companies (Apple, Merck, McDonald’s) have NEGATIVE yielding bond. In other words, if you were to lend the German government money for 10 years (i.e. purchase a 10-year Bund) […]
Europe’s only hope
Since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008/09, the Eurozone has been in the midst of a multi-year debt crisis. In many countries, including France, Italy, Spain, Portugal – and of course Greece – government indebted increased to such elevated levels that the prospect of a genuine “debt trap” was real. By debt trap, we […]
Is Trump winning the trade war?
Shortly after the high-stakes meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit resulted in a temporary ceasefire and agreement to resume trade negotiations, Trump was taking to the airwaves to declare that the U.S. was winning the trade war and “winning big”. Few would consider an agreement to resume negotiations to be […]
The investing world has changed (again)
What a difference a few weeks makes. Throughout the months of May and June, global inflation expectations fell suddenly, dragging down global bond yields. The fall coincided with a break-down in the talks between US and Chinese trade negotiators as well as an increase in US tariffs on Chinese imports. Market-implied 10YR inflation expectations Source: […]
The contentious state of US-China relations
Last month, Morgan Stanley hosted its China BEST conference in New York and the topic du jour was, of course, the current state of the US-China relationship. Despite daily news headlines addressing the “trade war,” keen market observers have likely deduced by now that underlying the US-China tension is not trade or even economic policy, […]
Don’t Be the Greater Fool
Beyond Meat (Nasdaq: BYND) has delivered sizzling returns for investors, making it one of the best performing IPOs of 2019. Benefiting from secular tailwinds in the plant-based meat market, BYND has a large longer term revenue opportunity and is already growing rapidly. But is Beyond Meat a good investment? BYND sells plant-based meat substitutes that […]
Trade War: How Did We Get Here?
Given the seemingly endless stream of headlines regarding the U.S. / China trade war, we thought it may be useful to take stock and reflect on the timeline of developments to date. While it appears the situation has descended into an increasingly unsolvable confrontation, as Andrew discussed in a recent blog, U.S. President Donald Trump’s […]