I feel obliged to share a rather amusing discovery I recently made.
It was a picture of hedge fund legend Ray Dalio celebrating his 77th birthday in Ibiza, dancing until 4am in one of the island's many superclubs. Dalio later posted on X that he had "a blast", a level of enthusiasm usually absent from his discussions of debt cycles.
It is comforting to ...
You know a financial issue has become mainstream when it develops its own acronym as a descriptor; as FORO, the fear of running out (of retirement savings), has in recent years.
It’s not hard to see why. Australia’s four-plus million current retirees didn’t have the benefit of high rates of super guarantee (SG) over the entirety of their working lives. ...
The investment landscape changed dramatically on Budget night. The Government's objective was simple: to impose a minimum 30% tax rate on investment gains, regardless of a person's income. The result is the extraordinary situation where a self-funded retiree on a modest income who does not receive the Age Pension could pay a flat 30% tax on capital ...
Companies that are reliable dividend payers are not just good income providers for investors, they have historically been better at delivering consistent returns and weathering challenging and uncertain market conditions.
As such, a dividend-focused global investing strategy may help investors maintain equity exposure while also managing risk, ...
This is an update on my 6 Feb 2026 article on the RBA’s record on inflation.
Australian CPI inflation came in at 3.8% for the 12 months to June 2026. This is down from 4.6% in March, but still well above the RBA’s medium-term target range of 2-3%. The RBA’s preferred measure, ‘trimmed mean’ CPI, is also still well above target at 3.6%.
Despite ...
For those of you who have just connected, I retired 5 months ago from being a full-time academic after researching retirement planning for nearly 20 years. Now I am focusing on implementing my findings: for myself, for individuals and for organisations. As I promised when I retired, I am providing a month-by-month account of my findings from the other ...
One of my favorite pieces of research is the Morningstar Markets Observer, which offers a wealth of information from a big-picture perspective. Particularly interesting is the report’s “Market Thermometer” chart, which shows seven key metrics and where each one stands relative to its range over the past 20 years.
I like this chart because it packs in ...
The trillion-dollar gamble
Every market cycle has its defining narrative. In the late 1990s it was the internet. Before the Global Financial Crisis, it was structured credit. Today, it is artificial intelligence.
The challenge for investors is that the most dangerous investment bubbles are rarely built on fiction. They are usually built on powerful ...
My first lesson in risk didn’t come from a finance class.
It came the day I told my parents I was abandoning a law degree in pursuit of one in English literature.
I wasn’t naive about the employment prospects. What I wanted (that I couldn’t articulate at the time), was to learn how the minds that came before me had made sense of uncertainty, ambition, ...
For the last few years there has been much talk of a “cost-of-living” crisis in Australia and of “falling living standards”. This has flared up again lately with the pickup in inflation resulting in a renewed fall in real wages.
In the last week the OECD noted that: a 5% fall in real wages over the last five years was amongst the worst in OECD ...
Two things are needed to be a successful income investor. You must have the patience to stay the course with existing positions so income compounds over time. You must also continually focus on the best place to invest your next dollar for future income growth.
This dichotomy can be difficult to navigate. Long-standing positions with significant ...
The Commonwealth Government’s Capital Gains Tax (CGT) reforms begin with a sensible principle: tax real financial gains rather than inflation. To advance this principle, Parliament passed the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026 in June, which will see changes to the CGT from 1 July 2027. Under the current system, individuals generally ...
I feel obliged to share a rather amusing discovery I recently made.
It was a picture of hedge fund legend Ray Dalio celebrating his 77th birthday in Ibiza, dancing until 4am in one of the island's many superclubs. Dalio later posted on X that he had "a blast", a level of enthusiasm usually absent from his discussions of debt cycles.
It is comforting to ...
You know a financial issue has become mainstream when it develops its own acronym as a descriptor; as FORO, the fear of running out (of retirement savings), has in recent years.
It’s not hard to see why. Australia’s four-plus million current retirees didn’t have the benefit of high rates of super guarantee (SG) over the entirety of their working lives. ...
The investment landscape changed dramatically on Budget night. The Government's objective was simple: to impose a minimum 30% tax rate on investment gains, regardless of a person's income. The result is the extraordinary situation where a self-funded retiree on a modest income who does not receive the Age Pension could pay a flat 30% tax on capital ...
Companies that are reliable dividend payers are not just good income providers for investors, they have historically been better at delivering consistent returns and weathering challenging and uncertain market conditions.
As such, a dividend-focused global investing strategy may help investors maintain equity exposure while also managing risk, ...
This is an update on my 6 Feb 2026 article on the RBA’s record on inflation.
Australian CPI inflation came in at 3.8% for the 12 months to June 2026. This is down from 4.6% in March, but still well above the RBA’s medium-term target range of 2-3%. The RBA’s preferred measure, ‘trimmed mean’ CPI, is also still well above target at 3.6%.
Despite ...
For those of you who have just connected, I retired 5 months ago from being a full-time academic after researching retirement planning for nearly 20 years. Now I am focusing on implementing my findings: for myself, for individuals and for organisations. As I promised when I retired, I am providing a month-by-month account of my findings from the other ...
One of my favorite pieces of research is the Morningstar Markets Observer, which offers a wealth of information from a big-picture perspective. Particularly interesting is the report’s “Market Thermometer” chart, which shows seven key metrics and where each one stands relative to its range over the past 20 years.
I like this chart because it packs in ...
The trillion-dollar gamble
Every market cycle has its defining narrative. In the late 1990s it was the internet. Before the Global Financial Crisis, it was structured credit. Today, it is artificial intelligence.
The challenge for investors is that the most dangerous investment bubbles are rarely built on fiction. They are usually built on powerful ...
My first lesson in risk didn’t come from a finance class.
It came the day I told my parents I was abandoning a law degree in pursuit of one in English literature.
I wasn’t naive about the employment prospects. What I wanted (that I couldn’t articulate at the time), was to learn how the minds that came before me had made sense of uncertainty, ambition, ...
For the last few years there has been much talk of a “cost-of-living” crisis in Australia and of “falling living standards”. This has flared up again lately with the pickup in inflation resulting in a renewed fall in real wages.
In the last week the OECD noted that: a 5% fall in real wages over the last five years was amongst the worst in OECD ...
Two things are needed to be a successful income investor. You must have the patience to stay the course with existing positions so income compounds over time. You must also continually focus on the best place to invest your next dollar for future income growth.
This dichotomy can be difficult to navigate. Long-standing positions with significant ...
The Commonwealth Government’s Capital Gains Tax (CGT) reforms begin with a sensible principle: tax real financial gains rather than inflation. To advance this principle, Parliament passed the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026 in June, which will see changes to the CGT from 1 July 2027. Under the current system, individuals generally ...
