Here’s what you need to know today

• ASX outage sparks investor outrage. The ASX announcement system went down on Monday, preventing roughly 80 companies from publishing investor updates and sensitive announcements. This is the fourth major slip-up by the ASX in the past 12 months; including the $400 million wipeout of TPG Telecom’s stock due to publishing incorrect data. (AFR)

• Trump closes Venezuelan airspace. US President Donald Trump has declared the airspace over Venezuela to be closed but failed to elaborate further. This comes as a major US military presence has built up off the coast of Venezuela. Washington claims this is in order to suppress the drug trade, but many skeptics believe this to be the lead-up to an invasion. (ABC)

• Early childhood educators receive pay rise. The final installment of a $3.6 billion pay increase will be received by early childhood educators, giving an extra $160 per week to more than 268,000 Australians. The raise was passed in November of last year to help retain the workforce and attract new workers. (9 News)

• Death toll hits 900 in Southeast Asian floods. Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand have been rocked by major flooding in the wake of Cyclone Ditwah, with the death toll reaching 900. Major infrastructure has been destroyed across the three countries, and thousands of people have been displaced from their home. (WIO News)

• Ukrainian attacks punctuate peace talks. The US-led peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have been described as productive but complicated. This comes as Ukrainian drone attacks hit two of Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ oil tankers. Kazakhstan has waded into the affair, asking Ukraine to stop drone attacks on its Black Sea terminal after an attack halted oil exports from the terminal. (ABC, Guardian, SCMP)

• Bullying, psych claims push workers’ comp near $2 billion. Bullying, harassment, and work stress have been cited as the culprit behind NSW’s workers’ compensation hitting nearly $2 billion of losses across the public and private sectors. The number of psychological injuries increased by 20% in 2025 according to the Nominal Insurer, which covers 340,000 businesses and 3.4 million workers. (AFR)

• ChatGPT turns 3. The AI phenomenon ChatGPT celebrated its third birthday this year. The company has been at the centre of the AI boom, hitting 1 million users within its first five days of launching and now sitting at 800 million weekly users. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has risen from a $20 billion valuation to a $500 billion valuation in the same time frame. (Seeking Alpha)

• Gemini chases ChatGPT. Google’s AI product, Gemini, is gaining ground on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, increasing Gemini mobile app users from 400 million to 650 million since May. Google trains the Gemini model on its own chips, allowing it to circumvent the expensive Nvidia chips that power the majority of the AI market. (FT)

• Australian home prices rise 1% in November. Cotality’s Home Value Index indicates a 1% increase in home values across Australia in the month of November. This was driven by Perth, who saw a 2.4% increase during the month. This is the third consecutive month of home value increases. (Savings.com.au)

• ANZ lays off ESG. ANZ has laid off the head of its climate team, as well as several other environmental, social and governance team members. This comes amid a sweeping restructure across ANZ. (Capital Brief)

• El Jannah sells for nearly $1 billion. The Lebanese chicken chain El Jannah has been acquired by a New York private equity firm for nearly $1 billion. The owners, Andre and Carole Estephan, will stay involved with the business as PE firm General Atlantic takes over. (Real Commercial)

• FIRB stonewalls TikTok. The Foreign Investment Review Board has blocked TikTok’s efforts to build data centres in Australia. TikTok’s Chinese ownership is the source of the concern, as defence and strategy think tanks have highlighted the risks of allowing ownership of critical information technology infrastructure by a geopolitical giant such as China. (AFR)

• Chinese manufacturing slump hits record length. China has seen its eighth consecutive month of negative factor activity, marking the longest stretch on record. This is believed to be due to decreased demand in spite of a recent trade truce with the US. (AFR)

• Swiss voters deny inheritance tax. 79% of Swiss voters rejected a proposed inheritance tax on the super-rich, which would have imposed a 50% levy on inheritances over 50 million Swiss francs. The tax measure was put forward by the leftist Social Democrats and intended to direct the funds raised by the levy towards climate change mitigation. (Politico)

What the…?

The Australian super industry is heavily invested in the outcomes of Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations taking place in Moscow this week. A successful peace deal could potentially allow Australia’s funds to trade their 30 million shares in Russian companies that have been frozen since 2022.

The super industry has received some unwanted attention recently for investments in companies that indirectly support the Russian war effort; the funds have not breached any sanctions. (AFR)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today

Have AI and data centre demand put even more pressure on logistics and industrial properties?

This question was posed to Jason Huljich, cofounder and joint-CEO of Centuria, one of Australia’s largest commercial real estate investors. Here’s his response from an episode of Equity Mates Investing (Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

Jason: Look, it's interesting. For data centres, it all comes down to power.

We got into data centres recently. We've owned data centres in our industrial REIT actually. So we have one of Telstra's largest data centres in Clayton in Victoria. We own another data centre in Perth, but we started looking at data centres and how can we compete in the space. There's a lot of big operators from around the world.

What you've seen is them building these massive structures and we started talking to a group that specialised in smaller data centres. They had technology that was called liquid immersion. Basically most data centres are air conditioned, and they have heaps of air conditioning to cool down the servers.

What you've seen is groups like Nvidia now building these faster and faster and more powerful chips for AI, which means they get hotter and hotter and it's basically got to the point where the new chips can't be air cooled, it's just not efficient enough. So we invest in this company that has these tubs, and you get the server rack and, putting it simplistically, you're putting it into a liquid. It's a synthetic polymer and you just cool the liquid and it's a lot more efficient than air conditioning. The other good thing is you can pack 10 times the compute in the same area.

You've seen this massive trend of data centres getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We think especially for AI, you'll see them coming back the other way. So we'll go back the other way, but yeah, you've seen DC operators look at industrial land, but there's a lot of industrial land. (Apple | Spotify | YouTube)

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