How Resource Limits Lead to Financial Collapse
Resource limits are invisible, so most people don’t realise that we could possibility be approaching them. In fact, my analysis indicates resource limits are really financial limits, and in fact, we seem to be approaching those limits right now. Many analysts discussing resource limits are talking about a very different concern than I am talking…
Markets Require Regulators Not Watchdogs
Markets require regulators. As Adam Smith, the champion of the invisible hand, notes in The Wealth of Nations, when individual interests are left unregulated they work to turn competitive markets into monopolies. But what happens when regulators meant to check individual interests fail to promote the public interest? Consider Australia’s banking sector. The banking royal commission has…
New Silver Bull Coming?
Silver has been dead money over the past year or so, relentlessly grinding sideways to lower. That weak price action has naturally left this classic alternative investment deeply out of favor. Silver is extremely undervalued relative to gold, while speculators’ silver-futures positions are extraordinarily bearish. All this has created the perfect breeding ground to birth…
RBA rates decision stuck between jobs growth and household debt
Is the Reserve Bank of Australia’s monetary policy on a collision course with itself? Quite possibly. The key data and evidence this week were employment figures in Australia, retail sales in the United States, and minutes from the Reserve Bank of Australia board and US Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). First, the data. ABS figures…
Mining Services and Construction Stocks with Strong Earnings Growth Forecasts
Many investors seek safety with the service providers of the “hot” products or commodities of the moment. In the face of booming commodity prices in iron ore or oil, common sense suggests investing in a company that provides services for multiple miners and oil operators provides a level of diversification that suggests less risk. Conventional wisdom advises…
Lessons From The Resurrection Of The Iron Ore Miners
Fueled by the insatiable appetite of the Chinese Government to build, build, build; ASX iron ore miners led Australia on an unprecedented mining boom, with the price of iron ore eclipsing US$180 per tonne in early 2011. The price softened in 2012, leading to some opining the boom was about to end, with others in the…
Breville Innovates Its Way To International Success
I admire small Australian companies that take on global markets and succeed in industries where the odds are stacked against them. Companies that deliver good results over long periods, innovate and take risks, and usually prove the doubters wrong. Breville Group is an example. The kitchen appliances maker is one of Australia’s great small-cap companies. Breville’s…
A Contrarian View of a Battered Mining Industry
Newcomers to share market investing searching for “how to” advice quickly learn that most investing strategies have mirror opposites. Value investors follow the maxim, “buy low, sell high”. The opposite strategy is growth investing, where the maxim is “buy high, sell higher”. While some might call these trading strategies rather than longer focused investing strategies, trend…
Buying on the Dip
While stock price fluctuations are to be expected, during dire and even simply uncertain economic conditions the fluctuations can be wild, some bordering on the irrational. Such fluctuations often present buying opportunities for investors with an appetite for risk. In today’s market there exists ample opinion to support both a Bear outlook and a moderately…
Does the debt crisis signal the end of the mining boom?
It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when mineral commodities were considered passé and BHP Billiton rarely made broker headlines – but between the early 1980s and 1990s a credit crunch and sovereign debt crisis in Latin America and Russia saw a sharp downturn in commodities prices. Crises are nothing new and the…
