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Here’s what you need to know today

• All eyes are on the Reserve Bank of Australia today as we await this afternoon’s cash rate announcement from governor Michele Bullock. If you want to find out as soon as its announced, head over to the Equity Mates Instagram. (Instagram)
  
  

• Former US President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The statement from Biden’s office explained while the former President has, “a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management." (Nine)
  
  

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the sidelines of Pope Leo XIV’s mass of inauguration. Defence was front of mind as Europe seeks to strike a defence agreement with Australia and Zelensky thanked Australia for its $1.5 billion in military aid as the two leaders discussed what more could be done. (AFR)
  
  

• Israel’s armed forces have begun “extensive ground operations” in Gaza. This comes after a week of air strikes which killed 460 people, according to Palestinian officials. Renewed ceasefire talks in Qatar have made little progress. (ABC News)
  
  

• Victorian Treasurer Jaclyn Symes is preparing to hand down the state’s budget on Tuesday night, and has been forecasting a $600 million surplus despite warnings from ratings agencies and forecasts that the state’s debt will continue growing to reach $187 billion by 2028. (AFR)
  
  

• On Friday, US President Trump announced his administration would send letters to countries in the next two to three weeks letting them know their tariff rates. On the same day, Vietnam, facing 46% tariffs, approved a $1.5 billion proposal by the Trump Organisation to build golf courses and hotels in Hanoi. (ABC News)
  
  

• Mining services giant Mineral Resources has picked an outsider to take over as Chair in an effort to repair its tarnished reputation. Malcolm Bundey, former CEO of packaging company Pact, has been bought in to help turn around a company that has fallen 70% in the past 12 months. (AFR)
  
  

• The National Stock Exchange of Australia (NSX), Australia’s third stock exchange, will be acquired by the Canadian Securities Exchange. This will be the second North American exchange operator to increase their presence in Australia after America’s CBOE acquired Chi-X in 2021. (Capital Brief)

What the…?

Elizabeth Holmes became famous for her blood-testing startup Theranos. She is currently serving a prison sentence for defrauding investors after it was found Theranos knew their blood testing kit did not work and were faking test results.

So the business world was surprised to hear that Holmes’ partner Billy Evans is currently raising money for Haemanthus, a startup that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics” and “a radically new approach to health testing”. Could Elizabeth Holmes soon be involved in a second blood-testing startup? (AFR)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

3 insights from Nick Griffin

Below are three snippets from our conversation with Nick Griffin, founder and CIO at Munro Partners. Listen to the full episode on Equity Mates Investing (Apple | Spotify | YouTube)

What key lessons did you learn over your investing journey?

The first thing we worked out was ‘go global’. The second thing was just focus on structural change, where the big winners come from... And then the third thing that we definitely worked out was there's only a few of these, so just be concentrated and try and just converge on these big winners... And so basically the entire process was built out of those three covenants, and that's the process we've been running now for nearly 20 years and it works very well for us.

How do you manage mistakes and risk?

96% of all companies that list don't create any value at all. 4% of companies that list create the entire value of the US equity market over the last 90 years... Most good fund managers have a batting average of roughly 50%... You are going to make mistakes. What you have to do is find a way of processing that mistake and removing it from your list and then focusing on the good ones.

What conventional wisdom in the industry do you think is wrong?

The stock market is not the economy. It's not but everyone tries to connect them... Think about it this way: The average return on the S&P 500 over a long period of time is 8%. The average GDP in the United States over a long period of time is 3%.

The difference is those companies that are growing above GDP because of these big structural changes that they're leveraged to. Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Apple, and all the next ones to come. You're not buying the economy, you're buying a warrant on human innovation.

Prefer to watch this conversation with Nick Griffin? All Equity Mates episodes are available to watch in full on YouTube:

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