📈 Australian wage growth fails to beat inflation | Meta faces $2 trillion penalty

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The Big Picture

• Australian annual wage growth fails to beat inflation. Overall wage growth increased by 3.2% annually running below headline inflation of 3.8%, meaning workers are going backwards in real terms. Data suggests three RBA rate rises are cooling the labour market, though governor Michele Bullock warned last week that another rate rise remains on the table, saying "the risks are skewed to the upside on inflation." (AFR)
  
  

• Government announces superannuation advice overhaul. The government will give superannuation funds more ability to provide financial advice at no extra cost, as part of the most significant overhaul of the financial advice industry in years. A new "class of adviser" restricted to super funds and life insurers will be able to provide specific guidance under lower education requirements than fully qualified advisers. Super funds will also face new bank-style capital requirements to ensure they can compensate members if high-risk investment options fail. (AFR)
  
  

• US, German and Japanese borrowing costs hit fresh multi-decade highs. Mounting government debt, the ongoing Iran war and AI infrastructure spending are all competing for capital and pushing costs higher. US 30-year Treasury yields hit their highest since 2007, reaching 5.33%, while Japan's 10-year borrowing costs reached a three-decade high and German yields touched their highest since 2011. These borrowing costs matter as they set the benchmark for household mortgages and corporate borrowing, meaning everyday people pay more to borrow and businesses face higher costs which are often passed on to consumers. (BBC)
  
  

• Trump halts 50% Canada tariffs at the last minute. The tariffs, covering roughly US$20 billion worth of Canadian imports from wine to hockey sticks, had local businesses warning the rate would make products uneconomical to sell into the US. Trump also floated reviving the Keystone XL pipeline, a long-proposed oil pipeline from Canada's Alberta to US refineries, as part of discussions with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. (CNBC)
  
  

• China allows Nvidia H200 chips as AI race intensifies. Beijing has permitted small batches of Nvidia's H200 chips to enter mainland China, with ByteDance and Tencent each receiving around 10,000 processors as Chinese AI labs race to close the gap with US rivals. The move reflects China's recognition that local chips are yet to meet the demands of cutting-edge AI training, the Chinese government is still limiting how many Nvidia chips can enter to ensure Chinese tech companies still buy from homegrown chipmakers like Huawei. (FT)

Companies in the news

• Meta faces $2 trillion penalty over allegations it deliberately hooked children.
  Twenty-nine US states have opened a landmark trial against Meta, accusing the company of designing Facebook and Instagram to create compulsive use among young people while misleading parents about safety risks. "Meta's business model can be summed up with four simply: Hook the user, hold them, harvest their data, and hide the truth," a California lawyer told the jury. Meta faces potential penalties of up to $2 trillion by its own calculations. (AFR)
  
  

• OpenAI pauses model testing and slows development after AI hack. The maker of ChatGPT has announced a two-week pause on testing and a slowdown in AI development after two of its models autonomously hacked into rival AI firm Hugging Face last month. More than 1,000 tech workers have since signed a petition calling on the US government to support a coordinated slowdown in advanced AI development. (ABC)
  
  

• WiseTech shares shed 8.7% as ACCC executes search warrant. The ACCC has executed a search warrant at WiseTech, requiring the logistics software company to hand over data as part of an investigation into an alleged breach of competition law. The investigation is separate to an existing ASIC probe into executive director Richard White for potential insider trading. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Temple & Webster plunges, Breville stumbles while Stockland bucks the trend. Temple & Webster fell 17.8% after the furniture retailer didn’t provide a revenue guidance because of housing market uncertainty while revealing sales had fallen sharply. Breville fell 4.2% despite record sales as US tariffs and costs from shifting manufacturing out of China diminished earnings. Stockland was the standout, surging 12% after posting a 20% rise in full-year profit, with analysts flagging residential sales volumes were better than anticipated. (AFR | Capital Brief)
  
  

• Unitree Robotics surges over 600% in market Shanghai debut. Unitree Robotics is the largest humanoid robot maker in the world and one of the few to turn a profit, shipping more than 5,500 units last year with its flagship model selling for US$13,500, a fraction of the cost of comparable US rivals. The listing comes as the Trump administration moves to ban Chinese-made humanoid robots on national security grounds. (BBC)

Time is running out to secure your FinFest 2026 tickets!

Less than 25% of tickets remain for Australia's biggest investing festival, back at Carriageworks in Sydney on Saturday 24 October.

Hear from Joe Aston, Scott Phillips, Andrew Brown and many more of Australia's best investors and entrepreneurs. Whether you are just getting started or have been investing for decades, FinFest is the one event on the Australian calendar you do not want to miss.

Grab your ticket before it is too late.

Leopold Aschenbrenner's US$35 billion loss is the biggest in trading history.

The AI wonderkid’s leveraged AI stock bet through his Situational Awareness fund generated a US$35 billion loss through Jane Street Capital in July. This catapulted him to the top of the all-time global leaderboard of trading disasters and surpassing even the most notorious rogue trader meltdowns in financial history.

Jane Street itself reportedly absorbed a US$15 billion hit from its exposure to Aschenbrenner's positions. The scale of the loss has drawn comparisons to some of the most catastrophic financial collapses ever recorded, with only a handful of bank failures and corporate hedging disasters coming close. (FT)

How Australia's Politicians Invest Their Money

We recently dug through the federal parliamentary register of interests to find out where Australia's politicians are putting their own money.

Every federal parliamentarian is required to disclose their investments, and after combing through them, we found everything from Bitcoin and US tech stocks to Australian miners, a bear ETF betting against the Australian share market, and enough trusts to give even the most seasoned accountant a headache.

Ged Kearney: The Kitchen Sink Portfolio. The Labor MP for Cooper holds 56 investments across individual shares, ETFs and managed funds, covering everything from the Nasdaq 100 and emerging markets to clean energy and sustainable investing. The problem is that many of those funds likely own the same underlying companies. More investments does not always mean more diversification, and the Kearney household has well and truly embraced the throw everything at it approach.

Tim Wilson: The Bear Who Wouldn't Let Go. Australia's Shadow Treasurer holds perhaps the most unique investment on the register, being the Betashares Australian Equities Strong Bear ETF, a geared product designed to rise when the Australian share market falls. Wilson reportedly bought it during the early stages of COVID in 2020 as a hedge against a market crash. Six years later he still owns it, and according to analysis reported by the Guardian, it has lost around 75% of its value. The product is generally designed for short-term trading, not long-term holding. We are just hoping Tim knows something about the Australian economy that the rest of us do not.

Tom French: The Bitcoin Believer. Two of the Labor MP's six personal investments are dedicated entirely to Bitcoin through the Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund and iShares Bitcoin Trust. The rest sits in US fintech company SoFi, 3D printing company Nano Dimension, Fortescue and Pilbara Minerals. Easily Parliament's most modern portfolio.

Check out all of the portfolios on the Equity Mates website here.

• On Equity Mates Investing we chat the increasing public backlash around data centres, a stock picker joins Pimp My Portfolio and could CSL finally be back? (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

• & on Get Started Investing Jess is joined by Kelly. She’s a 28-year-old working as a manager in Data and AI consultancy who negotiated her salary from $75k to over $170k. Found out how in today’s How I Got Started episode. (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)