Capital gains tax is once again the subject of parliamentary debate, with Treasurer Jim Chalmers declining to rule out options for reform.
Along with negative gearing, the capital gains tax discount has long been suggested as one cause of Australia’s housing affordability crisis.
The tax applies to the capital gain when an asset is held for more than a ...
The Ozempic moment for SaaS (software as a service) refers to a pivotal disruption scenario where a transformative technology threatens to erode or fundamentally reshape an established market leader’s core business model, much like the hype around Ozempic (and other GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy) did to ResMed (ASX:RMD) around 2023.
Back in mid-2023, as ...
I promise this will be my last article for a while on Division 296 tax (the proposed new tax for people with more than $3 million in super). There are other interesting things to talk about when it comes to super. But with so much commentary about the need to ‘do something’ to respond to the new tax, I wanted to throw my thoughts into the mix.
A ...
We have had our fair share of bubble talk in the AI space over the last six months. So many people argue that AI stocks are in a bubble and that bubble may lead to a crash soon. But while we can debate the former, I think the latter is the wrong conclusion.
It is extremely hard, if not impossible, to identify a bubble in real time. Still, even if you ...
In the midst of the public market run-up of the last three years, private equity has advanced, but not to the extent that investors have previously been accustomed. Off the highs of 2021, slow dealmaking has limited ‘exits’ from portfolios, fostering an attractive opportunity for liquidity-oriented strategies, such as general partner-led ‘continuation’ ...
Retail investing has undergone a seismic shift in recent years, with individual investors now accounting for a growing share of market activity. R. David McLean, Jeffrey Pontiff, and Christopher Reilly, authors of the study “Taking Sides on Return Predictability,” published in the November 2025 issue of The Journal of Financial Economics, examined how ...
Last month, Treasury’s Population Statement predicted that Melbourne will overtake Sydney as Australia’s largest city in little more than a decade. That optimistic outlook cuts against today’s prevailing narrative: that Melbourne is the capital of a failing state defined by its strained public finances, COVID hangover and an opposition obsessed with ...
As many Firstlinks’ readers are aware James Gruber departed for a new opportunity at CommSec. I’m extremely grateful for everything James has done and his stewardship of Firstlinks.
It is never easy to follow a founder and I’m proud of how James continued and expanded upon Graham’s legacy. That legacy is front of mind for me as the temporary custodian ...
One of the more controversial parts of our tax system – the capital gains tax discount – is currently under review in Canberra as part of a Greens-run Senate inquiry. The discount means that taxpayers who hold an asset for more than one year pay tax on only half of their gains.
Most submissions to the Senate inquiry have focused on the level of the ...
Australia enters 2026 with its three largest cities each having an average house price of over $1 million. It’s frustrating for young Aussies like me looking to buy their first home. But it’s also the unsurprising outcome of a persistent, decades-long myth: that falling house prices are electorally fatal.
Prime Minister John Howard set the tone ...
What is an investment bond?
Investment bonds are pooled investments, like managed funds, which can be invested across a variety of asset classes to create diversification. One of the important differences between an investment bond and a managed fund, is that investment bonds are tax-paid. That means tax is paid on the earnings of the underlying ...
2025 was another great year for equity investors, the third year in a row where the ASX 300 returned more than 10%1. All investors want the good times to keep rolling, but the longer they do and the higher valuations creep the closer we are to an inevitable market correction. Investors that want to de-risk their portfolios might be tempted to sell out. ...
Capital gains tax is once again the subject of parliamentary debate, with Treasurer Jim Chalmers declining to rule out options for reform.
Along with negative gearing, the capital gains tax discount has long been suggested as one cause of Australia’s housing affordability crisis.
The tax applies to the capital gain when an asset is held for more than a ...
The Ozempic moment for SaaS (software as a service) refers to a pivotal disruption scenario where a transformative technology threatens to erode or fundamentally reshape an established market leader’s core business model, much like the hype around Ozempic (and other GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy) did to ResMed (ASX:RMD) around 2023.
Back in mid-2023, as ...
I promise this will be my last article for a while on Division 296 tax (the proposed new tax for people with more than $3 million in super). There are other interesting things to talk about when it comes to super. But with so much commentary about the need to ‘do something’ to respond to the new tax, I wanted to throw my thoughts into the mix.
A ...
We have had our fair share of bubble talk in the AI space over the last six months. So many people argue that AI stocks are in a bubble and that bubble may lead to a crash soon. But while we can debate the former, I think the latter is the wrong conclusion.
It is extremely hard, if not impossible, to identify a bubble in real time. Still, even if you ...
In the midst of the public market run-up of the last three years, private equity has advanced, but not to the extent that investors have previously been accustomed. Off the highs of 2021, slow dealmaking has limited ‘exits’ from portfolios, fostering an attractive opportunity for liquidity-oriented strategies, such as general partner-led ‘continuation’ ...
Retail investing has undergone a seismic shift in recent years, with individual investors now accounting for a growing share of market activity. R. David McLean, Jeffrey Pontiff, and Christopher Reilly, authors of the study “Taking Sides on Return Predictability,” published in the November 2025 issue of The Journal of Financial Economics, examined how ...
Last month, Treasury’s Population Statement predicted that Melbourne will overtake Sydney as Australia’s largest city in little more than a decade. That optimistic outlook cuts against today’s prevailing narrative: that Melbourne is the capital of a failing state defined by its strained public finances, COVID hangover and an opposition obsessed with ...
As many Firstlinks’ readers are aware James Gruber departed for a new opportunity at CommSec. I’m extremely grateful for everything James has done and his stewardship of Firstlinks.
It is never easy to follow a founder and I’m proud of how James continued and expanded upon Graham’s legacy. That legacy is front of mind for me as the temporary custodian ...
One of the more controversial parts of our tax system – the capital gains tax discount – is currently under review in Canberra as part of a Greens-run Senate inquiry. The discount means that taxpayers who hold an asset for more than one year pay tax on only half of their gains.
Most submissions to the Senate inquiry have focused on the level of the ...
Australia enters 2026 with its three largest cities each having an average house price of over $1 million. It’s frustrating for young Aussies like me looking to buy their first home. But it’s also the unsurprising outcome of a persistent, decades-long myth: that falling house prices are electorally fatal.
Prime Minister John Howard set the tone ...
What is an investment bond?
Investment bonds are pooled investments, like managed funds, which can be invested across a variety of asset classes to create diversification. One of the important differences between an investment bond and a managed fund, is that investment bonds are tax-paid. That means tax is paid on the earnings of the underlying ...
2025 was another great year for equity investors, the third year in a row where the ASX 300 returned more than 10%1. All investors want the good times to keep rolling, but the longer they do and the higher valuations creep the closer we are to an inevitable market correction. Investors that want to de-risk their portfolios might be tempted to sell out. ...
