Olivers Insight

Share markets are at or around record levels despite lots of worries, particularly around the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak. A common concern is that this is because central banks (like the Fed and the RBA) are distorting market forces and just want higher asset prices. And flowing from this its argued that prices for assets like…

  2020 has seen a very noisy start to the year with one major event with significant human and investment market implications after another. For Australia it started with an intensification of the bushfires but moved on to a significant ramping up of US/Iran tensions where, according to President Trump, war came “closer than you…

The last few weeks have seen escalating concern that a new coronavirus (called 2019 novel coronavirus or nCoV) originating in the Chinese city of Wuhan in Hubei province will become a global pandemic. Concern has been heightened after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak an “international public health emergency” on 30 January and…

Our high-level investment view for this year is that a combination of improving global growth boosting profits and still easy monetary conditions will help drive reasonable investment returns, albeit more modest than the very strong gains of 2019. This note revisits five charts we see as critical to the outlook.   Chart #1 – Global…

Introduction The Australian bushfire season that began in September has been horrific with more than 7 million hectares of bush destroyed, more than 25 deaths, significant loss of livestock, estimates of more than a billion wildlife animals killed and more than 1800 homes destroyed. More than 200 fires are still burning. Following the intensification of…

After the poor returns for investors in 2018, 2019 turned out surprisingly well with average balanced growth superannuation funds looking like they have returned around 15%. Source: Mercer Investment Consulting, Morningstar, AMP Capital But can it continue this year? Particularly with an intensification of the US/Iran conflict adding to global uncertainty and the drought and…

For a long time, we have been bearish on the Australian dollar, seeing a fall into the high $US0.60s and revising this to around $US0.65 in May. In early October it fell to a low of $US0.6671. While negatives remain significant for the $A there is good reason to believe that we are close to…

Introduction After sharp share market falls when headlines scream about the billions wiped off the market the usual questions are: what caused the fall? what’s the outlook? and what does it mean for superannuation? The correct answer to the latter should be something like “nothing really, as super is a long-term investment and share market…

Bad meme   There is always someone telling us that there is some sort of economic/financial disaster coming our way. However, there does seem to be a higher level of hand wringing now about the global economic outlook than normal. These concerns basically go something like this: Global debt – both public and private –…

The world of investing can be confusing and scary at times. But fortunately, the basics of investing are timeless and some investors (often the best) have a knack of encapsulating these in a sentence or two that is insightful and easy to understand. In recent years I’ve written several insights highlighting investment quotes I find…