Here’s what you need to know today

• Apple announced a $500 billion investment plan focused on building more products in the US and training more US workers. This investment will see Apple hire 20,000 more workers in the US, build a new manufacturing plant in Houston, and open a training academy in Michigan. The announcement comes one day after Apple CEO Tim Cook met President Trump, and is seen as a move to get an exemption for Apple products from Trump’s tariffs on China. (AP News)
  
  

• Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers is in the US promoting the power of Australian superannuation funds to America’s big financial institutions. So far he’s met with Blackstone, Citi and JPMorgan. The Australian government hopes the promise of Australian investment in the US can be a negotiating lever in the tariff conversation with the Trump Administration. (AFR)
  
  

• Ukraine and the US are reportedly finalising a deal to give the US a share of Ukraine’s natural resource wealth. The original proposal saw the US demand $500 billion as repayment for aid. Reports are now the figure is closer to $90 billion. (NY Times)
  
  

• Australian Federal Labor has asked questions around Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s share trading during the 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis. In particular, purchases of shares in Australia’s Big Banks one day before a bailout was announced in 2009. (News.com.au)
  
  

• Domino’s Pizza Enterprises saw shares fall 11% as it reported its first half-year loss in 20 years as a listed company. The $22m loss was largely driven by $116m one-off impairments costs in closing stores as new CEO Mark van Dyck works to rationalise Domino’s store numbers. (AFR)
  
  

• Nine Entertainment has announced more than $100 million in new cost-cutting measures and refused to answer questions about US giant CoStar’s $2.7 billion bid for property listing portal Domain. Profit for the first-half of the year was down 29% to $95 million. (AFR)
  
  

• Microsoft has scrapped two leases with data centre operators in the US, and it has the whole AI investing world on edge. Investors are worried that this is a sign of things to come in a post-DeepSeek world, while Microsoft has said its $80 billion infrastructure spending plan remains on track. (Reuters)
  
  

• Chinese tech giant Alibaba is also ramping up its AI investment, announcing a 380 billion yuan (A$82 billion) investment over the next 3 years. This investment will exceed the company’s spending across AI and cloud over the past decade as CEO Eddie Wu called AI a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity. (Yahoo)
  
  

• Australian market regulator ASIC has published new rules that will require the ASX to publish a comparison of the fees it charges for clearing and settlement services against its international counterparts. ASIC Chair Joe Longo explained, "The clear and benchmarked pricing structure is intended to reduce competitive barriers to entry for entities unaffiliated with the ASX." (Capital Brief)
  
  

• British oil giant BP has scrapped plans to increase renewable energy generation 20-fold by 2030, and instead will refocus on fossil fuels. Bank of America analysts have forecast BP will cut $2-3 billion in annual spending related to low-carbon and renewable projects. (Reuters)

What the…?

Remember Fyre Festival? Well you’d think plans for the island festival would’ve ended after organiser Billy McFarland was put in jail. You’d be wrong.

Billy McFarland is back out and organising Fyre Festival 2.0, with tickets ranging from $1,400 to $1.1 million. The festival is scheduled to run from 30 May to 2 June this year, however, the festival is yet to announce any artists performing. Whether its a success or not, this level of chaos feels primed for a follow-up Netflix documentary. (Quartz)

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Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

How one adviser would invest $500 a month

Community Question: If I have $500 to invest every month, how should I think about allocating it to build a portfolio for the long-term?

We put this question to Matthew Fenning, founder and Managing Director of AdviseWise

A fantastic first question from any future investor looking to take the plunge into personal finance. 

The best place to start is with the why – what are your goals, or what are you looking to achieve from your investments?

If you don’t have a goal yet, it is important to stop and develop one that you want to achieve from investing – goals will provide direction, motivation, and purpose, and as a result will help you become a disciplined investor. 

Let's say your goal is to build a $100k portfolio over the next decade – what might that look like?

Well, if you were to invest $500 per month every month, assuming that on average over a 10-year period, your return was 10% per annum, your investment would have compounded to around $100,000 over that time.

Sounds great right?

So, what are some proven ways to allocate your investments to get there?

Starting with a “core” investment or investments that are well diversified will set you on a path to achieving your long-term goal.

An example would be starting with a global index-based equity ETF (exchange traded funds) and an Australian index-based equity ETF. Starting here you can accumulate investments indirectly in a broad-based portfolio but manage trading and investment costs by having a single holding in the overarching ETFs.

Nobel Prize laureate, economist Harry Markowitz is reported to have said “diversification is the only free lunch in investing”?

Why is that?

Practically speaking, diversification helps us select investments that maximise returns within an acceptable level of risk, in other words, why take more risk than you need to in order to get the same result.

What does diversification look like? 

In equity markets this can mean spreading out investments across many different differentiating factors for example industries, countries, company size, geographical location to minimise your exposure to shocks in the market and consistently perform over the long term.

There are very few stock pickers who consistently outperform the market in the long term, and they do it all day every day, and by concentrating their investment in a smaller number of stocks, their returns may well be higher, but they carry with that a much higher risk on the downside as well.

With the explosion of ETF’s and micro investing funds this has also never been more achievable enabling you to invest that money no matter how large or small the amount. 

As your portfolio accumulates, you may consider complimenting your “core” investment with other “core” or “satellite” investments that are focused on one or some of the differentiating factors we talked about earlier.

Fundamentally when investing for the long-term it is important to:

1. Keep it simple – take your “free lunch”

2. Be consistent – both with your contributions and your investment approach

3. Be disciplined – investing has risks, you’ll need to take the sour with the sweet

4. Time not timing – remember it’s time in the market, not timing the market.

Interested in speaking to a financial adviser? Fill out the form on our website and we’ll match you with one of our hand-picked advisers.

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