Most budgets are forgotten within a fortnight. The 2026-27 Federal Budget will not be one of them. Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down his fifth budget on Tuesday night, and beneath the headline tax offsets and the usual cost of living packaging sits the most...
There is a particular ritual that follows every Federal Budget. The Treasurer delivers his speech, the cameras pan to the gallery, and within forty eight hours every political figure with a microphone delivers a response that is, with remarkable consistency, exactly...
There is a particular rhythm to how markets treat states, cities and asset classes that have fallen out of favour. First there is the reasonable concern. Then the reasonable concern hardens into consensus. Then the consensus hardens into a kind of received wisdom that...
Investing is rarely about finding the most exciting story in the market. More often, it is about understanding what is already priced in, what is being underestimated, and whether the businesses and assets in your portfolio can keep compounding through the noise....
When investors think about an oil shock, the instinct is usually to look at the chart, watch Brent or WTI jump, and assume the story begins and ends there. Oil up, markets nervous, airlines down, energy stocks up, end of analysis. But that is rarely how the real world...
There is a particular kind of market mistake that turns up again and again. A headline improves, the immediate fear recedes, oil gives back some of its panic move, equity futures bounce, and the collective temptation is to declare the danger over. We have just seen...
For the past two years, markets have treated AI as a semiconductor story. And honestly, that made sense. Chips are tangible, exciting, and sit at the glamorous end of the value chain where margins are fat and every earnings beat feels like confirmation of a new...
When oil prices spike, the market's first instinct is almost always the same. Buy energy producers. Sell airlines. Dust off the inflation playbook. Then pretend that understanding the direct effect is the same as understanding the whole story. It rarely is. The...
A few weeks ago, in The Middle East Build-Up: What Investors Must Think About Now, we argued that investors did not need to predict war, they needed to prepare for its consequences. The core view was simple. If the US and Iran moved toward open conflict, oil would...
There are periods in markets when everything feels orderly. Trends extend, volatility is contained, and investors begin to assume that tomorrow will look much like yesterday. Then there are periods of transition. 2026 feels like the latter. Not dramatic or...
There is a persistent habit in markets of extrapolating yesterday’s winners indefinitely into tomorrow. For the better part of two decades, the United States has dominated capital formation, technology listings, consumer brands and financial innovation. It became...
Over recent weeks investors have been overwhelmed by economic data that refuses to tell a coherent story. Growth appears acceptable, employment remains strong, hiring softens, wages rise, and confidence fluctuates. Depending on the framework applied, the same...
