Podcast Archive

We are down to just 104 active cases in Australia. Victoria has just the one active case and Victorians can now take their masks off outdoors on either side of the Vic/NSW border as Dan Andrews relaxes restrictions and the border opens up. Things aren't looking so good across the globe, but astonishingly European countries are now looking to ease restrictions leading into the Christmas period. Locally AGM season rolls on, while the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday gives the US a busy first three days of the week. 

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Tom has called my hopes that the stock market becomes enjoyable again the "Quiet Bull Market Theory" - lets hope he's right and we have a decade of low stress profitability ahead (some chance!) - in the absence of any strategy setting changes today we look at two hated sectors that are bottoming and wonder whether this isn't the moment. Thanksgiving next week - the US goes quiet for a couple of weeks. Don't mind that. 

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Today we talk about getting comfortable with the market after four years of constant anxiety.  In two weeks the investor's world has become a much more predictable place. At this point we do not have an overvalued equity market (maybe the US has but not us), we are on a trajectory back to a pre-pandemic normality, with the adults back in charge in the US. And our baseline is an Australian equity market that is not overvalued but could, in some sectors, be offering a multi-decade buying opportunity.  We talk today about some positive vibes for regulation, the economy and the banks and include all the bank sector research which is now saying they are overbought having spent the last year oversold. 

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ASX 200 up 14 yesterday, up another 39 today. With the adults back in control of the White House and with vaccine optimism seeping into some of the recovery sectors I envisage a much quieter “Tweetless” life as an investor, steady, predictable, boring. Is it too much to ask for a steady if plodding bull market? The foundations are being built and there is still significant recovery potential as you’ll see in the Strategy section today. 

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Moderna's vaccine news builds on Pfizer's vaccine news to create an all time high in the Dow Jones and the S&P 500. The headlines don't get much better for our portfolios - we are fully invested with the rotation continuing from momentum and growth to recovery stocks, cyclicals and value plays. The adults are back in charge of the White House and Australia is in a new trade pact with China. It looks like the foundations for a new bull market are being put in place and there is still a lot of upside to go in the right stocks, stocks that are slowly going to toddle back to their February highs. What a fabulous couple of weeks.  

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We were up 79 points until the plug was kicked out of the ASX servers and the entire market was paused at 10:24 this morning. We don’t have an answer to what has gone wrong just yet, but keep an eye on our website for the latest when it comes through. A few quick updates in the STRATEGY section today after a fairly quiet weekend. Plus, AGM season rolls on this week alongside a couple of company results. 

This week a special ‘On the Couch’ with Chris Hall the CIO of Ellerston Low Volatility Income Strategy fund or ELVIS.  The ELVIS Fund has been a consistent outperformer and is made up of between 30-40 mid to large cap stocks with a focus on delivering low volatility consistent income returns. For any member looking at ways to maximise income On the Couch this week should be compulsory listening as Chris lets us in on some interesting ideas on where to find income and equity growth.

Chris spent over ten years as Senior Investment Officer at Argo Investments Limited, managing the Australian equities team and its A$5 billion in assets. Before Argo, he was Managing Director and Senior Portfolio Manager at Blackrock Asset Management in Hong Kong, as well as being a member of the Management Committee overseeing the Asian Fundamental Equities Team with $35bn in assets.

This VIDEO might interest some of you as Chris talks about rewriting the rules on income. 

As the vaccine rally loses momentum we discuss today what the next few months could look like even if there is a vaccine. It is clearly not going to be a clean economic recovery and I anticipate a daily debate on the trajectory of the recovery as we once again hang on every economic signpost to find out if it is going to to clean, fast, slow or messy. Messy looking likely. We have assumed the best this week, but the reality is that we still need a stimulus bill, containment, and there is a risk that once revealed, some of the balance sheet damage could just freeze up the credit markets again.  We also include a bit of stock commentary, the usual technical observations and a heads up to watch the stock tips coming out of the SOHN conference today. 

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A bit of a pause in the recovery trade this morning as travel, banks and energy stop to think about it and technology and specialty retail regain some poise. Virus concerned creeping in in the short term - Italy hits 1m cases. Net result the market is pretty much unchanged. Today we make a change to the ETF portfolio, publish the restructured growth and income portfolios, look at a host of interesting technical observations and highlight the interesting turn and announcement from Telstra. 

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We made a lot of changes to the Portfolios yesterday as we restructured for a post-pandemic world. You can see the changes in the Strategy piece today. Today we dissect the anatomy of the market rotation that is going on. Very happy to see the vaccine news continuing to drive the same themes today, it looks like yesterday's one day share price pops might just turn into persistent medium term themes as we come out of 2020 and COVID-19 and go into 2021 fully invested, with a vaccine arriving, and Trump and his unstable, unpredictable manipulation of the stock market by tweet, a distant memory. A much more stable world is ahead of us and we have positioned for it.