Cliona O'Dowd

1 month ago | futures.tradingcharts.com | Cliona O'Dowd

Mar 27, 2025 (The Australian - ABIX via COMTEX) --Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones has responded to the tariffs regime of US President Donald Trump in a post-budget briefing to the Financial Services Council. Jones said the federal government will "aggressively defend" the open trading arrangements and the rules-based order that the nation has "massively" benefited from.

1 month ago | stockhead.com.au | Cliona O'Dowd

Donald Trump’s trade war and the threat of a US recession have wiped trillions of dollars from sharemarkets around the globe, putting a sheen on defensive assets for investors fleeing to safety. Already this month the sharemarket sell-off has led to a rise in fixed income ETF flows, with a third of all new ETF money now going to these strategies, according to exchange-traded provider Betashares. That’s up from 17 per cent in February.

2 months ago | stockhead.com.au | Cliona O'Dowd

Australians have slashed their expectations for what it means to retire comfortably but more than half still don’t expect to build up enough of a nest egg by the time they exit the workforce. It’s even worse for workers over 50, most of whom can’t see themselves saving enough for a comfortable retirement, according to a new survey from Colonial First State. The biggest shift in the past year has been in expectations of what a comfortable retirement looks like.

2 months ago | stockhead.com.au | Cliona O'Dowd

What is the value of a financial adviser? At least one benefit, it seems, is having a steady hand when markets are in flux. Another is access to asset classes that can often be out of reach for the average investor. But what about returns? New data from Investment Trends, compiled for The Weekend Australian, attempts to quantify the merit of financial advice, looking at the recent experience of advised and unadvised investors in self-managed super funds.

Jan 21, 2025 | stockhead.com.au | Cliona O'Dowd

Super funds delivered bumper returns in 2024, with the best of the lot, retail fund Colonial First State (CFC), notching up a near 18 per cent gain over the year. But run-of-the-mill balanced funds, the default for most Australians, were outshone by passive index super options that returned more than 15 per cent as sharemarkets boomed.