I noticed a piece in the paper today about insurers not insuring anyone at the moment. Just thought I’d share my personal experience…my girlfriend and I purchased a property last week (so I guess the property market is now set for a significant fall) and even though the contract is not unconditional yet we are …
Category Archive: Uncategorized
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Mar 01
Reuters Poll – Westpac disagrees with itself
Fascinating that St George and Westpac, supposedly the same company now, have differing opinions on what the RBA is going to do tomorrow. Clearly, there’s no economic department merger yet! Tweet Send article as PDF
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Mar 01
Reuter’s Poll for tomorrow’s RBA Meeting
Reuters Consensus / Forecasts Economist - RBA Rate ( % ) AMP - 4.00 ANZ - 4.00 Barclays - 4.00 Citi - 3.75 CBA - 4.00 Deutsche - 3.75 4Cast - 4.00 GSJBW - 4.00 ICAP - 4.00 JP Morgan - 3.75 Macquarie - …
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Feb 19
Back to Basics Portfolio Construction
My latest draft article submitted for publication in IFA can be found here. In an nutshell, one of the problems with asset allocation portfolio construction in recent years is the increase in the number of asset classes promising diversification benefits…hasn’t quite turned out that way. Secondly, we’ve seen equity-like risk creeping into the fixed interest …
Feb 01
A Simple Portfolio Analysis of the Future Fund
On Friday the Future Fund published its asset allocation as at 31 December 2009. Before we jump to any conclusions about its make-up its important to understand what the investment objectives are… CPI plus 4.5% to 5.5%pa over a rolling ten year period with an acceptance of short term underperformance whilst the Strategic Asset Allocation …
Feb 01
RBA Rate Rise tomorrow? Odds on
Australian Government Bond Yields – 29 Jan 2010 Source: Bloomberg The RBA Cash rate is currently at 3.75% and with government backed 30 day bank bills at 4.12% and the recent tender of 23 March 2010 Treasury Notes fetching a yield of ~3.96% the financial markets are pretty much expecting a 25bps increase. Whilst the sharemarkets have had the …
Feb 01
Jon Stewart talks Obama vs Bankers
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Obama Takes On Bankers www.thedailyshow.com Daily ShowFull Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis Tweet Send article as PDF
Jan 24
S&P500 vs Inflation vs PE Ratio over 97 years
The above chart shows the 10 year performance of the S&P500 (blue bars) versus the 10 year average annual inflation (red bars) versus the Shiller PE Ratio at the start of each decade (green bars). There are several notable observations… The worst performance was during the 1930s when the US experienced a deflationary environment and …
Jan 23
The return of lifetime annuities!??!
I just read that the Henry Review is likely to suggest that superannuation can be exchanged for guaranteed lifetime income like lifetime annuities. Strangely, it can be done already by purchasing a lifetime annuity with superannuation money. The problem with the current situation is that there are no lifetime annuities left on the market….Comminsure and …
Jan 22
Interest Rates…relatively stable but a minor dip at the long end
Source: Reserve Bank of Australia The government bond yield curve certainly expects another 50bps in RBA hikes this year with bonds yielding in the second half of this year trading around 4.3% to 4.4%. But since the start of the year the yields in longer term bonds have declined a little…this indicates a slight drop in …