Financial Planning, Investment & Insurance Solutions

  • GameStop Saga Will Have Hangover

    GameStop Saga Will Have Hangover

    GameStop. Hedge Funds. Wall Street Bets. Robinhood. What is going on? You can read about the story pretty much anywhere at the moment, so we’ll briefly run through it and then take a look at a few other areas we think are important and unlikely to see as much attention. A group of people on ‘Wall Street Bets’, a subsection of an internet forum called reddit, essentially took a dislike to the fact a video game retailer called GameStop was being shorted by a group of hedge funds. Shorting is essentially where you borrow a stock to sell it in…

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  • The Big Lie of Social Media Trading Coaches

    The Big Lie of Social Media Trading Coaches

    Social media has been blamed for being the cause of many ills over the past decade. The ability to analyse our behaviour and micro target us with advertising may become the biggest ill of all. Being able to blatantly tell lies and distort the truth to a narrow group of people is regarded as a serious problem. It’s harder to address than general advertising. If deceptive ads were more widely seen, they would be more likely to be flagged and exposed. Much of the focus to this point has been on political campaigns, but the investment world is quickly catching up.…

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  • 2020 End of Year Wrap

    2020 End of Year Wrap

    What did we learn in 2020? Our views were mostly reinforced. Have a portfolio built for your circumstances and if you have a plan, stick with it! The following chart of the Australian sharemarket speaks for itself. Large and unexpected falls are never welcome, but riding them out remains the best course of action. We may feel panic and revulsion in the moment, but if you press the exit button, you’re liable to miss a turnaround that can emerge much more quickly than expected. As we hopefully illustrated by the message we presented in this video during the worst of…

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  • ‘Low Risk’ Term Deposit Alternatives

    ‘Low Risk’ Term Deposit Alternatives

    Tough to earn a buck for nothing these days. While that’s always been the case for our labour, there was always the illusion of some free cream from our money in the bank. Illusions, being illusions, this wasn’t strictly true. There was always tax and inflation nipping back any real return for doing nothing. Illusions are comforting though. If an investor thought they were getting a good enough return, then they wouldn’t go out of their way to chase one. An RBA cash rate of 0.10% presents a whole new mind game for investors. Some of the more opportunistic types in the…

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  • The Value Dilemma

    The Value Dilemma

    Every investor will face a conundrum at some point: what to do when their beliefs don’t work. Sometimes it’s an assumption that becomes lore. A favoured company paid a dividend for 20 straight years. Of course, it’s not going to ever stop paying a dividend… then it stops paying a dividend. A dagger to the heart! An outrage, there were plans for that money! An assumption gone wrong. Yet of all the things that can go wrong with an individual share holding, it’s probably a minor one. Sometimes it’s evidence. Academic research has shown certain companies have historically compensated investors…

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