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1 week ago | 
livewiremarkets.com | Hans Lee
It’s been a wild ride for investors this year, especially if your portfolio has been invested predominantly in equities. With recent market swings far from normal, it’s a good time to revisit one of investing’s golden rules – diversification. And a well-diversified portfolio can only be achieved if you have a strategy that is both well thought-out and well diversified across a range of asset classes.
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2 weeks ago | 
livewiremarkets.com | Hans Lee
In part one of this series, we looked at five rules for building a core portfolio allocation. In this second part, we follow it up with three more rules for building a satellite portfolio allocation with ETFs. By the end of this series, we hope you’ll have a basic understanding of how to build a great portfolio that will both thrive in a range of market scenarios and help you achieve your financial goals. Core exposures are your building blocks.
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3 weeks ago | 
livewiremarkets.com | Hans Lee
There’s a saying that goes “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. While that proverb applies to everything, it’s particularly true of investing. Over the next two articles, we’ll look at a series of rules and guidelines you can use to help build a brilliant investing foundation. In this article, we focus on the themes that underline a great core portfolio. Rule #1: Work out what you want to gain from your investingIt’s great to say you want to make more money but what do you want to work towards?
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1 month ago | 
livewiremarkets.com | Hans Lee
It’s been a head-spinning week for investors. Last week, the S&P 500 briefly entered a technical correction a mere one month after it hit an all-time high. Donald Trump’s tariff uncertainty is the cause of this volatility, and its erratic implementation has some commentators now asking whether a “transition”1 is really an impending recession. JPMorgan now puts the chance of a US recession at 40%, while Goldman Sachs has it at 20% (and rising)2.
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2 months ago | 
livewiremarkets.com | Hans Lee
The Australian sharemarket’s reputation as a dividend haven has come into question over the last 12 to 18 months. While the ASX 200’s price-to-earnings ratio has continued to rise to levels well beyond its historical average, both the dividend and earnings yields of the index have fallen substantially. Theory and history suggest this isn’t normal, given earnings and dividends normally inform each other.
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2 months ago | 
livewiremarkets.com | Hans Lee
For the past few years, inflation has been a top concern for policymakers worldwide, which led to a sharp rise in interest rates and a moderation in financial conditions. Now, as 2025 goes into full swing, a shift seems to be on the horizon. Recently, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut the cash rate for the first time since November 2020. The 25basis point cut saw the official cash rate drop from 4.35% to 4.1%, and had an immediate flow-on effect to mortgage and term deposit rates.
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2 months ago | 
livewiremarkets.com | Hans Lee
Livewire gives readers access to information and educational content provided by financial services professionals and companies (“Livewire Contributors”). Livewire does not operate under an Australian financial services licence and relies on the exemption available under section 911A(2)(eb) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) in respect of any advice given. Any advice on this site is general in nature and does not take into consideration your objectives, financial situation or needs.
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Feb 11, 2025 | 
livewiremarkets.com | Hans Lee
While much of the investing world's attention will be focused on artificial intelligence and finding the next great growth stock, Pzena Investment Management founder, chairman, and co-CIO Rich Pzena and long-time international equity portfolio manager Allison Fisch are not being dissuaded from their core of hunting for deeply undervalued stocks.
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Feb 9, 2025 | 
livewiremarkets.com | Hans Lee
When Citi's sell-side team shared its most recent views on the UK expansion of Australian furniture retailer Nick Scali (ASX: NCK) two weeks ago, they sounded nervous but hopeful:"We are buy-rated on Nick Scali. However, we are concerned that an uptick in Australian housing, which would be beneficial for the company, may be being pushed out to the right as interest rates remain higher for longer," analysts led by Sam Teeger wrote to clients on January 20th.
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Feb 4, 2025 | 
livewiremarkets.com | Hans Lee
In a market and policy environment where everything changes on a tweet, excessive volatility is the name of the game that will keep more than a few investors up at night. But just because tariff threats and a second global trade war are the topic de jour right now does not mean that there aren't other issues to keep abreast of. Among them, the fact that asset valuations are still stretched as well as the unanswered question as to how many interest rate cuts central banks can afford to make.
