I haven’t looked to US Housing starts for a couple of months.  April’s figures indicate 717,000 starts, up about 30% year on year, although permits declined to 715,000, indicating month on month growth will probably stabilise at around that level over the next couple of months. I said here in February that if housing starts […]

The returns for Australia’s top 15 equities fund managers are out for the period to 30 April 2012.  The median performance was a 4.7% loss.  The benchmark over the period showed a 3.6% loss, the 1.1% difference is what investors were paying to achieve the result.  The table is posted here: Over the equivalent period, […]

For those looking for something a little longer than the relatively short posts I’ve produced of late, this will be a monster.  I hope it causes you to stop and think about the society we live in, how it came to be what it is and how we, and future generations could be best served […]

Some links this week, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the internet is a real gold-mine of information for the inquisitive mind.  OK, you’ve probably noticed… There was some continuing good economic news out of China, with the PMI expanding (just, from 53.1 to 53.3) for the 5th consecutive month as reported on Bloomberg.  […]

I thought I would look this week at a comparison between a US listed stocks versus one on the Aussie exchange.  In my view, for reasons I can’t quite explain (I have some ideas, including the differences in interest rates & Australian pessimism due to Political issues), stocks in Australia appear to my judgement to […]

My wife and I filled out the forms to transfer our Superannuation into a recently established Self Managed Superannuation Fund (SMSF) today.  For those readers outside of Australia, Superannuation is a Government mandated retirement savings program, whereby your employer contributes 9% (currently – though it is expected to increase over time) of your salary into […]

There is considerable hand-wringing in the financial media about the long-term effects of the substantial money-printing that has been conducted by the major central banks since the GFC took hold in 2008.  In particular, the conservative European and US press are certain that there will eventually be enormous inflation as a consequence of these actions. […]

My first bit of information this week is a little graph I stumbled across in part of my weekly readings that represents US corporate profits.  When I look at this, it seems perfectly reasonable that the US stock-market is once again nearing record highs: When you see corporate profits are about 33% higher in aggregate […]

I am off to Perth first thing tomorrow morning, so I won’t write in much detail this week.  I have an ever-increasing watch-list of interesting stocks, but await a catalyst to realise something closer to a fair value for some of our existing holdings in order to deploy the cash into new opportunities. Regular readers […]

This update marks EGP Fund No. 1 Pty Ltd’s first full year of trading.  I have this to say – may every future year mirror its results in relative terms! I will confess I am slightly under whelmed by our absolute performance.  But I remind fellow investors our target is and will always be relative […]

  I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between the performance of the Australian and the US markets, particularly over the last 6 or so months.  For those of you who don’t follow these markets closely, an interesting thing has been happening.  The Australian stock market has stagnated relative to the US markets performance.  […]

I read a variety of economic and investment blogs on a daily basis, more economic than investment because I don’t want to have my investment ideas too heavily influenced by others current thinking; yet understanding the global economy can only benefit from a wider consumption of views (especially those contrary to your own).  A number […]

I promised here to review a stock I had passed up when the fund started & review the reasons we ended up going with other options. Ranked 14 (out of 14) stocks I considered for investment (carefully considered, I looked over a great many more than that and continue to do so on a regular […]

This week, I point readers to a blog I follow called Future Pundit, which focuses on a variety of technological trends likely to alter our future.  The blog is fantastic for those with an inquisitive mind about how the future is likely to look. Specifically this week, I was interested in this edition from about […]

Our advantage over the benchmark disappeared this week when it took off for a run, but our stocks stayed static.  Our final four stocks report this week, so I’m hoping for a significant move, but time will tell… I promised last week to go into some more detail about the first disposal we have ever […]