April has been another excellent month for equity markets. The US hit new highs again last night with the S&P500 up 0.7% and similar advances for the Dow Jones. The Nasdaq underwhelmed slightly but still rose 0.2%. The three drivers: Positive economic data - GDP rose by 6.4%, and the number of people filing for unemployment [...]

Issue: Friday 16th April 2021 At the risk of sounding like a broken record... 'we are in an economic environment never seen before'. Global equities trade near record highs, in Australia the property market is explosive, consumer and business confidence is at a 10 year high, and our economy is growing faster than ever. And it's [...]

End of March Market Update Both Australian and US markets finished the month up by 1.8% and 4.4% respectively. March also tied off an eventful yet positive quarter for both markets which saw the All Ordinaries rise 3.6% and the S&P 500 rise 6.2%. March saw bond yields continue their steady rise which caused a mild [...]

Issue: Friday 19th March 2021 It is a year since the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The USA was about to close its borders, and Australian's were about to start tackling each other for loo paper. Hard to believe that 12 months on and equity markets have surged back, the majority beyond pre-pandemic [...]

It's rare that there is so much focus on bond yields and inflation, and it's mainly due to their potential impact on the sharemarket. However, it shows the perils of short-term predicting when the AFR carried the headline on Friday, 'Bonds blow up equity markets - again' and that night, the S&P500 rallied 2%, NASDAQ recovered [...]

Issue: Friday 19 February 2021 Last week was GameStop; this week, it's Bitcoin with some similar themes - waves of money, speculation and a movement behind it. Thanks mainly to a tweet from Elon Musk, Bitcoin has risen more than 30% in just over a week and is currently sitting just above $US50,000. Tesla's explanation for [...]

Issue: Friday 5 February 2021 Welcome 2021 Traumatic events have a habit of etching themselves in our mind. We can remember where we were and what we were doing even if it was from thousands of miles away and we didn't have anything to do with it personally. For different generations this will mean different things. [...]