Fundamentals: By the Numbers – Sirtex Medical (SRX)
Few things get a retail investor’s blood pumping more than the risk/reward prospects in the biotech sector. New drugs mean the potential for big profits. If an experimental treatment receives commercial approval, the share price skyrockets. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. If clinical trials are delayed or fail, share price plummets in a heartbeat….
The Buy and Hold Investing Strategy – Will Rising Oil Prices be the Final Nail in the Coffin?
In January 2008, the price of oil reached the century mark – $100 a barrel – for the first time ever. By May 2008, American investment banking giant Goldman Sachs was predicting the price of oil would reach $200 a barrel within two years. It did not. In September 2008, another American investment bank –…
Renting for life? Housing shift requires rethink of renters’ rights
By Kate Shaw, University of Melbourne Australia is the world capital for property speculation. Australians play property like Monopoly: buying, selling, demolishing, rebuilding, extending, renovating, always with the promise of appreciation on resale. The contribution to GDP of real estate transactions alone is the highest in the world, and three times higher than that in…
Lifescience looks a sector to target in 2014
Freelancer Ltd’s soaring sharemarket debut has sparked predictions of a rush of information technology floats and further gains in small tech stocks in 2014. Less considered has been stunning rallies in several small lifescience stocks and the prospect of a breakout year for biotech. ASX-listed biotech stocks gained an average 53 per cent last year,…
PENNY STOCKS: 6 Recent Coal IPOs
Precious metal explorers dominated the float market in the past three years as companies took advantage of a higher gold price to raise capital. Coal explorers had less fanfare. Yet a group of six coal initial public offerings – one of the best-performed segments of the IPO market – may have further to go if…
The Graphene Promise – Disruptor or Disrupted
What’s the “next big thing” to hit the market? This question has tantalized rabid investors in search of the big payoff since forever. Next big thing candidates typically are involved in business operations that have the potential to make a significant impact on the way things get done in the world. Many are technology firms. …
Macpac dresses up Super Retail Group
My daughter needed a new winter jacket. It had to be from Macpac, the New Zealand-based outdoorwear maker Super Retail Group bought earlier this year.Like many teenagers, my daughter is growing quickly and is easily influenced in fashion. Others her age deemed Macpac the brand of choice and the rest was history. Buying the jacket meant…
In a disruptive world ‘Big Brands’ offer protection
Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith teared up when he heralded the closure of his 19-year-old locally sourced all-profits-to-charity Dick Smith Foods because the German discount chain Aldi, which only entered Australia in 2001, has “destroyed us”. Smith said, when announcing the closure in July, that he had written to Coles, Metcash and Woolworths to warn them that Aldi’s…
Gold Juniors’ Second Quarter 2018 Fundamentals
The junior gold miners’ stocks have been thrashed in August, plummeting to brutal multi-year lows. Such carnage naturally left sentiment far more bearish than usual in this forsaken contrarian sector. But these extremely-battered gold-stock prices certainly aren’t justified fundamentally. Junior gold miners’ collective results from their just-completed Q2’18 earnings season prove their stock prices need…
ASX Most Innovative Companies
One of history’s all-time great investors – US based Warren Buffett, of Berkshire Hathaway – coined the term “economic moat” to characterize a company’s competitive advantage in its operating sector. High on the list of business practices that constitute a competitive advantage are cutting-edge technologies. For the past seven years, the Australian Financial Review’s Most Innovative…
