📈 Aussies pay record $34bn in stamp duty | Hedge funds bet $11bn against Big 4 banks

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The Big Picture

• Homebuyers pay record $34bn in stamp duty as ACT scraps it. The average Australian homebuyer can expect to pay nearly $62,000 in stamp duty. Stamp duty revenue is up 83% since 2019, hitting a record $34.4 billion last year. There is some good news — the ACT is removing stamp duty for first time homebuyers, calling it an "inefficient and unfair tax". (Real Estate | ABC)
  
  

• US launches new strikes one day after Trump calls for peace. A US Apache helicopter crashed after colliding with an Iranian drone, and while it is unclear if this was intentional, it prompted several waves of US strikes on Iranian targets. Iran retaliated, launching strikes on US bases in the region. Oil prices jumped 1% on the news. (Guardian)
  
  

• Tech slide resumes, erasing Tuesday’s rally. After recovering 1% Tuesday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell again, closing down 1%. SpaceX’s Friday IPO appears to have tech investors feeling nervous, with one commentator saying “I think we’re going to be choppy until we get that behind us.” (CNBC)
  
  

• “Silver economy” booms in China as births remain low. With roughly 400 million people set to be over 65 in the next decade, the Chinese government forecasts its industry around elderly people to hit $6.3 trillion by 2035. This highlights a shift of investment focus from children to the elderly, as the number of births has halved since 2015, hitting 8 million last year. (FT)
  
  

• Early inflation indicator from China hit 4-year high. China’s producer price index (PPI), which measures prices charged by producers, rose 3.9% in May, the high rate since 2022. Rising PPI typically foreshadows rising consumer price index (CPI), the standard measure of inflation, as producer prices are eventually passed down to consumers. (FT)

Companies in the news

• Hedge funds bet record $11bn against Big 4 banks. Hedge funds have doubled their short positions against Australia’s big banks as interest rate rises and the budget’s property-related tax changes threaten to cut the banks’ earnings. Commonwealth Bank is the largest target, accounting for over half of the shorted value. (AFR)
  
  

• Anthropic releases powerful Mythos model to users. Two months after saying Mythos was too powerful for public access and posed a cybersecurity threat, Anthropic has released Claude Fable 5, an AI model that uses a purportedly safe version of Mythos. Mythos famously escaped a closed testing environment onto the internet and emailed a lead engineer to flaunt its escape. (NYT)
  
  

• Chemist’s owner targets UK retailer for $14bn takeover. Sigma Healthcare is in talks to acquire Boots, a popular UK pharmacy retailer, for $14 billion. Sigma owns Chemist Warehouse and bought 75% of British group Greenlight Healthcare last month to expand the Chemist Warehouse brand to the UK. (AFR)
  
  

• Drone firm spikes 90% on ASX debut. Canberra-based Boresight, which makes training drones for military use, saw its share price rise to $0.38 after opening trading at $0.20. Boresight sells its systems to 14 militaries to train against drone warfare and has US and UK offices (AFR)
  
  

• EU orders Meta to allow AI competition on WhatsApp. This comes after Meta blocked rival AI firms from building AI assistants on the app. Meta is already the target of an EU antitrust investigation that seeks to prevent digital incumbents from using their scale to prevent competition. (FT)
  
  

• New Kalshi product crosses US$1bn volume in first week. The prediction market debuted its crypto perpetual futures last week, which are futures contracts with no expiration, allowing traders to speculate on asset prices without owning them. Over US$100 million of the so-called “perps” were traded in the first 24 hours. (CNBC)
  
  

• Carmakers bet on battery business for EVs and AI. GM is developing new sodium ion batteries to both compete with Chinese firms, which dominate battery manufacturing for both EVs and AI power supplies. This comes less than a month after Ford announced a similar move, though Ford will be using licensed technology from China’s CATL. (FT | CNBC)

AI’s latest challenge: Noise complaints

Noise may not be something that comes to mind when you think of the various gripes against AI, yet it is central to a new lawsuit against Elon Musk’s AI endeavours.

An estimated 10,000 Mississippi residents are represented in a new class action suit against xAI and SpaceX over the "omnipresent and inescapable" noise coming from a power plant used to power nearby data centres. Unlike some of the lawsuits previously faced by Musk, the evidence here is (literally) loud and clear. (ABC)

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Australian vs. US markets

We asked financial adviser Charlie Viola from Viola Private Wealth about how he Australian market stacks up against global markets, particularly the US.

While global markets have been flying, particularly the US has been flying, the Aussie market has been less of a stellar story. What do you think about things here at home?

Charlie: Yeah, our returns here have obviously have been muted. We're probably a contra-investment to the rest of the world. The rest of the world is AI and data centres and pharma in Europe and we're banks and mining. So we're probably old school and what have you.

The mining sector's actually performed quite well, but it's just the size and the scope of those banks and those banks kind of falling. So we are certainly a lower weight investor to domestic equities at this point in time we probably, again, probably believe that returns there will be somewhat muted and will probably be below long-term averages for the next kind of 12 or 18 months. So if we had to choose where we're putting our equities dollars, we're putting it into global.

Want to work with an adviser like Charlie to strike a balance between Australian and global assets? Fill out the form on our website and we’ll match you with one of our hand-picked advisers to help you get started.

• Equity Mates Investing. Stock markets are about to absorb $400 billion worth of AI-related equity. With SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI going public, on top of a record-setting stock sale by Google, this is a massive test for the AI trade in markets. Catch today’s episode to find out more. (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)