Here’s what you need to know today

• Australian Federal Police and ASIC have raided the offices of Australian shipping software company WiseTech. Officers executed search warrants looking for information on the trading of WiseTech shares by founder Richard White and three of his employees. WiseTech shares were down 16% yesterday. (AFR)
  
  

• Australia’s Domino’s Pizza Enterprises may be getting taken private. Bain Capital, the private equity company behind Virgin Australia, is reportedly eyeing off the Australian pizza chain at a $4 billion valuation. Shares jumped 19% before the company was put into a trading halt. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Another big Australian company seeing big share price moves was CSL, with shares falling 16% after it cut profit and revenue forecasts and pushed back the planned demerger of its flu vaccine business Seqirus. CSL shares are down 38% in the past year. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Australia’s AAA credit rating was reaffirmed by global ratings agency Fitch. Australia is one of 9 countries that is rated AAA by all three major credit ratings agencies - Fitch, Moody’s and S&P. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Gold’s price continues to slide. The precious metal was down 3% last night, pushing it back below US$4,000 per ounce. It is down 9% since 20 October. (Financial Times)
  
  

• There are signs that investors believe the US and China will reach a trade deal this week. US soybean prices surged on the expectation of a large order from China. (Bloomberg) Meanwhile, rare earth stocks fell reflecting expectations that China will delay export controls on Chinese rare earth supplies. Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths led the slide, falling 14% yesterday. (CNBC | Capital Brief)
  
  

• Apple reported quarterly earnings and has reached an important milestone in its transition from selling devices to earning money from subscription services. This year, for the first time ever, Apple’s services revenue will top $100 billion. This revenue includes fees from Apple Pay and the App Store and subscriptions to Apple Music and Apple TV+. (Financial Times)
  
  

• Amazon has announced it will cut 30,000 jobs from its corporate offices. This represents about 10% of its corporate workforce globally. (WSJ)
  
  

• Qualcomm is the latest chipmaker looking to take market share from Nvidia. After unveiling two new AI accelerator chips, one to launch in 2026 and a second in 2027, the American chipmaker saw shares jump 11%. Nvidia still has almost 90% market share in the AI chip market. (WSJ)
  
  

• Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund Corporation has invested $10 million in Hypersonix Launch Systems, a company working to build a hydrogen-powered hypersonic aircraft. The company will build an advanced manufacturing facility in Queensland and is set to begin test flights at NASA early next year. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Alphabet is the latest tech company to revive a nuclear power station. In order to power its increasing data centre footprint, Alphabet has agreed to an off-take agreement to revive the Duane Arnold Energy Centre in the US state of Iowa. The plant has been closed for 5 years. (WSJ)

What the…?

The mother and two sisters of Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee are cashing in $1.2bn worth of shares, reportedly to help fund the family’s enormous 12 trillion South Korean won inheritance tax bill following the death of patriarch Lee Kun-hee.

Samsung’s stock, often dubbed South Korea’s “national share,” is held by more than 5 million retail investors and has soared 84% this year, powered by chip supply deals with Tesla and mounting excitement over potential partnerships with Nvidia and OpenAI. (Reuters)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today

Why fees matter

This is an excerpt taken from the Get Started Investing episode ‘We hate fees! Here are the Cheapest ETFs in Australia’. Check out the full episode here (Apple | Spotify | YouTube)

A small difference in fees can have a big impact on your long term returns

Ren: Why do we hate fees? Because one of the few things that you can control in investing, the future is uncertain. The market is uncertain. The important thing is an investor is to control what you can control.

There's a few elements to that, like control your portfolio construction, be diversified, and then importantly, control how much you pay: lower your brokerage, lower your fees, keep the money in your pocket….even when you're talking about fees with a zero at the front of it, those differences can really add up.

So we used the MoneySmart managed funds fee calculator, which is pretty useful to illustrate the effective fees on your returns. We said a thousand dollars a month invested for 30 years - your working life - with the same return, 10% return. At 0.5% p.a fees, you get $1.87 million.

Bryce: Nice! I'm not going to say no to that!

Ren: That's great. That’s a reminder that if you try and get rich slow and you just take a market return over your life, you can become a millionaire.

Bryce: You can literally invest your way to a millionaire.

Ren: Yeah. So that's at 0.5% (fees). If you go 0.05% p.a, that’s $2.06 million.

Bryce: So an extra 200 grand!

Ren: A $200,000 difference between 0.5% and 0.05%. So again, when you're looking at your superannuation account or you're comparing ETFs, you might think they're both really low and they are both really low, but there are degrees to this and those degrees add up over time.

Bryce: Now, we should say Ren, that there is a caveat here and that it's to remember that fees are really only half the equation. Don't just go hunting low fees. After fee return is also very important. What that means is once you've paid the fees, you still want to be in a product that is actually performing well.

A message from Vanta

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• Three biggest security challenges facing fintechs in APAC today  

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• Real-world case studies from fintech trailblazers who’ve scaled trust with Vanta 

Learn how to overcome fintech security obstacles, so you can focus on business growth. 

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