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  • 📈 Albo's new beach house raises old political issues | US earnings season is here once again

📈 Albo's new beach house raises old political issues | US earnings season is here once again

Here's what you need to know today

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The view that led a thousand news bulletins. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s new beach house has become fodder for the Australian press

Here’s what you need to know today

  • Australia’s biggest business story: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese bought a $4.3 million beach house on the Central Coast. While it is certainly not a great look, and shows a lack of political instincts, it is hard to argue that there is much of a story here. Yet it is being decried and called Albo’s “Hawaii moment” (a reference to Scott Morrison’s ill-fated holiday during the 2019 bushfires). (AFR)

  • The Australian government has proposed banning surcharges on debit cards starting in January 2026. Currently many payments processors will charge similar fees for credit or debit cards and businesses will pass these on to customers via a surcharge. The government has said the Reserve Bank will be considering these surcharges as part of a review on payment networks and fees. (Guardian)

  • The NSW Government is introducing a novel reform to hopefully revive Sydney’s nightlife. Residents buying property near night spots will be asked to sign an “eyes wide open” clause that acknowledges they are aware there is late-night activity and hopefully will reduce the number of noise complaints. (ABC)

  • Oil prices fell as OPEC cut its demand forecast, primarily due to weaker Chinese demand. China is the world’s biggest importer of crude oil and iron ore, and as we see more data showing a Chinese economic slowdown, these commodity prices are falling. (Reuters)

  • In the US, Wall Street is gearing up for the Q3 earnings season as public companies share their results from July - September. Wall Street analysts seem to think profit across the market will rise just 4%, while company forecasts suggest aggregate earnings will rise 16%. With the S&P 500 up 23% so far this year (its best start to a year 1997), investors will be hoping companies can justify it with some strong numbers. (Capital Brief)

  • With a backdrop of an escalating China-Europe trade war, that has centrered on tariffs for electric vehicles, Chinese and European automakers have gone head-to-head at the Paris car show. While nine Chinese brands unveiled new EV models, the EU is set to impose duties of up to 45% on Chinese imports. China has threatened retaliatory tariffs on European cars and other goods exported to China. (Reuters)

What the…?

Here’s a wild organised crime story out of China. Between 2015 and 2023, a group of almost 80 people were involved in the theft of 4,000 corpses to be used in the manufacturing of bone grafts.

Chinese authorities estimate the crime ring made more than US$53 million in revenue before being shut down and arrested. While media is reportedly being censored, there are questions whether state-owned medical companies were involved as well as the government agencies that manage the companies providing funeral services. (Economist)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

Question from the Equity Mates community: Setting up education funding for my kids – how does this work? What are my options? 

We put this question to Dylan Pargiter-Green, Director and Financial Advisor at Bold Wealth

Very simply, the way we do this at Bold is effectively forced savings for a known future expense. You know approximately how much schooling is going to cost and we recommend you get to that stage with enough money to pay the bill when it comes around at the beginning of the year each year. 

Private schooling in Australia is a huge expense for those families who choose this pathway. Because of this, we like to plan early where possible – because compound interest is your best friend to having more savings later. 

More commonly though, we use Investment (education) bonds to help fund these education fees. The reason we love these strategies is because of the favourable tax rates on growth and income throughout the investment journey (maxed at 30% tax) and the 10-year CGT free withdrawal. We’ll often set up our client’s education funding plan to cover the high school years and potentially university, with the goal of receiving back all of the money they invested throughout the journey. From year 10 onwards, we withdraw the $ value of the school fees throughout the year, CGT free and this directly funds the education cost for the year, without needing to use savings and/or potentially take out new debt for a $40,000 bill every Jan/Feb (per child!)

This means we’re confident in meeting the school fees but also the clients have a capital pool at the end to continue to invest, pay off debt, gift to children and many other options. 

Want to speak to Dylan or another of our hand-picked financial advisers? Fill out the form on our website and we’ll put you in touch.

Today’s sponsor is Franklin Templeton

For global equity investors, “value” has been out of favour for a long time. At Brandywine Global, a Franklin Templeton company, we believe value will have its day. Particularly given the backdrop in the US – expensive valuations, uncertain election outcomes and sustaining tech industry hype. We take a consistent yet adaptive value approach, as value opportunities take many forms.

Now is a great time to have the flexibility to look across the globe with a strategy that is designed to outpace the broad market, while maintaining consistent exposure to value opportunities.

The Brandywine Global Opportunistic Equity strategy has an investment process that seeks “multiple ways to win” through macro, market assessment and stock selection, which has generated highly differentiated outcomes relative to peers.

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