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Here’s what you need to know today

• Australia’s unemployment rate rose to 4.3% in June. This is up from 4.1% in May. It isn’t all bad news though - the economy added 2,000 new jobs, it is just that the participation rate (Australians working or looking for work) increased by 35,600 people, meaning that the overall unemployment rate ticked up. (ABC News)
  
  

• It was a case of mixed messages last night in the US, as reports emerged that Donald Trump had privately told Republican lawmakers he was planning to fire Jerome Powell, the Chair of the Federal Reserve, before later telling the press he had no such plans. (Bloomberg)
  
  

• In a sign that trade protectionism leads to more trade protectionism, Canada has just imposed restrictions on foreign steel imports and a 25% tariff on imports that contain steel processed in China. Canadian steel-makers report being squeezed by cheap imports as well as tariffs levied by America. (BBC)
  
  

• While President Trump manages trade policy, his relationship with Jerome Powell, and the fallout from the Epstein document denials - he has made time for the critical issues: convincing Coca-Cola to use real cane sugar in the US. Currently, Coke uses high-fructose corn syrup in the US, and a switch to real sugar would bring it in line with the rest of world, including Australia, where it uses real sugar. Trump announced the change on social media, although Coca-Cola executives are yet to confirm the move. (AFR)
  
  

• OpenAI has announced its latest revenue plans - integrating a payment checkout system into ChatGPT and taking a cut of online sales made directly through the chatbot. This would allow users to purchase products without leaving ChatGPT and give retailers another sales channel, similar to the logic behind TikTok Shop. (Reuters)
  
  

• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reported quarterly results, with revenue up 39% to $32 billion and profit up 61% to $14 billion. The world’s largest chipmaker is benefiting from a huge surge in demand for advanced chips from designers such as Nvidia and Broadcom. (Reuters)
  
  

• ASML, the Dutch supplier of critical chip-making equipment, saw shares fall 11% after it told investors it could not confirm its growth targets for 2026 in the face of tariff uncertainty. This fall came despite ASML reporting quarterly sales of €7.7 billion, up 23% year-on-year and ahead of expectations. (FT)
  
  

• Cameron McIntyre, the CEO of Car Group (previously CarSales), has announced he will step down after 9 years at the head of Australia’s largest automotive classifieds business. While CEO Car Group has grown more than 230%. (AFR)
  
  

• Australian sports-betting company Betr Entertainment launched another takeover offer of fellow sports-betting company PointsBet after an attempted takeover by Japanese company MIXI did not pass a PointsBet shareholder vote. Betr’s all-share offer values PointsBet at $1.22 a share, higher than MIXI’s $1.20 offer. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Larry Ellison, cofounder of Oracle, is now the world’s second-wealthiest person as a surge in Oracle’s share price has him overtaking Mark Zuckerberg. Ellison’s wealth has ticked over US$250 billion. (AFR)

What the…?

Here’s an unsurprising side-effect of artificial intelligence: Microsoft are reporting that AI is making workers less social.

The tech giant’s 2025 Work Trend report surveyed found that a large number of workers are using AI tools to avoid interacting with their colleagues. The report surveyed 31,000 workers across 31 countries, showing that annoying co-workers is a global phenomenon. (Quartz)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

Adapting philosophies to a changing market

This is an excerpt from our conversation with Sorin Roibu, co-portfolio manager of the Brandywine Global Opportunistic Equity Fund, on Equity Mates Investing (Apple | Spotify | YouTube)

Bryce: The philosophy at Brandywine is consistently value, but with an adaptive approach; you include macro and a few other elements. So can you elaborate on that? How far do you stretch beyond the true value and what parts of it do you adapt?

Sorin: It's a great question. Let me first state that when we say stretch or adaptive, we're still true to the value. As I just said, we're looking to really understand the value of the business and buy below the intrinsic value.

However, what I would say is that if you're still doing value investing, like Benjamin Graham was doing in the 1930s, you're probably doing it wrong.

The nuance here is that a hundred years have passed, the makeup of the economy is different, the makeup of the world is different. So you have to evolve with that. So the way we adapt our approach is to realise that today the economy is a lot less capital intensive than it used to be in the 1930s, less industrial, less manufacturing, it's a lot more capitalised businesses, technology names that grow without a lot of capital. Profitability is different too.

So when we look at the world, we're trying to adapt and use the valuation tool that's appropriate for the opportunity, that's appropriate for the business environment that we're in, while still doing that basic valuation. We're looking at free cash flows, looking at balance sheet quality, the formulas, the math behind it is still the same, but realising that the competitive dynamic, the market backdrop, the economic backdrop is very different.

So if you're just going to go there with a little measuring tape trying to measure price-to-book across the board, you're going to find that the output is not necessarily what you wanted because for a lot of companies book value is irrelevant. This is when we say adaptive, as in, hey, we're still going to do value investing, but we recognise that times change and we need to change with times and make sure that our skill and our approach is relevant and still leads to good outcomes.

You can watch our full interview with Sorin on the Equity Mates YouTube channel:

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