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Here’s what you need to know today

• The Australian Council of Trade Unions declared they will use the upcoming Economic Reform Roundtable to call for changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, proposing that the tax breaks be limited to one investment property. Sally McManus, the union's secretary, told Insiders the current arrangements should continue for five years, but after that date, "we've got to bite the bullet". (Sydney Morning Herald)

• Meanwhile a report from Swiss Bank, UBS, showed that recent surges in property values have led to Australia now having the second-highest median wealth in the world at US$268,000 (A$411,000), beaten only by Europe's Luxembourg. (ABC News)
  

• Tourism Australia has unveiled a $130 million global campaign featuring Robert Irwin, alongside celebrities from China, India, UK and Japan to lure more tourists ‘down under’. Federal Tourism Minister Don Farrell said the number of international arrivals to Australia was expected to reach a record 10 million in 2026, growing to 11.8 million in 2029. (ABC News)
  

• Another week, another tariff drama. This time Swiss companies like Roche, Nestlé, and Swatch are reeling after the U.S. hit the country with a surprise 39% tariff. Announced on Switzerland’s national day, the move followed a failed call between President Karin Keller-Sutter and Donald Trump. (Financial Times)

  
  

• Reporting season continues this week, with Palantir among one of the most anticipated names reporting. The company shares are already up over 100% in 2025. But while Wall Street watches the numbers, Canberra’s watching the influence. Just weeks after the Greens called for a freeze on Palantir’s government contracts, the company appointed CMAX Advisory to lead its lobbying efforts in Australia. (Capital Brief)

  
  

• Boeing reported better than expected results last week, cutting losses and delivering its highest number of planes since 2018. But the good news didn’t last. More than 3,000 Boeing defence workers went on strike on Monday, dealing another blow to the embattled aerospace giant. (Reuters)

  
  

• A Miami jury has found Tesla partly responsible for a fatal 2019 crash in Florida involving its Autopilot driver-assist technology, ordering the company to pay over $240 million in damages. The landmark verdict has sparked speculation that it could open the floodgates for a wave of similar lawsuits against Tesla. (Economic Times)

  
  

• Eight countries that belong to the oil cartel known as OPEC Plus said that they would boost oil production by 547,000 barrels a day beginning in September, the latest in a series of monthly increases that began in April. (New York Times)

What the…?

Meta published a bumper set of results last week, with the stock up 10% as it reported 22% revenue and 36% profit increases. A lot of Mark Zuckerberg’s commentary was focused on his AI efforts - and he is pulling out all stops to catch up to OpenAI, Google and the rest.

One of the more out-there way Zuckerberg is trying to speed up the process is to build data centres without the building. To save construction time, the social media giant is housing multi-billion dollar GPU clusters under tents. (Quartz)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

The massive impact of inflation

This is an extract from the Get Started Investing episode titled ‘Why saving alone won’t make you rich’ (Apple | Spotify | YouTube)

Bryce: The dreaded "I" word - inflation. In other words, your money is worth more today than it will be in the future, and so if you are not investing that money to beat the rate of inflation, you are going to be worse off.

Ren: It's the classic example of when I was a kid, a pie and a bag of lollies cost $1 at the local milk bar. All those stories you hear about how cheap things used to be, the prices rising over time is inflation and so you need your money to keep up with inflation, ideally keep up and then beat inflation.

Let's say you go through a period, we have the last couple of years where inflation was quite high. For argument's sake, inflation is at 4% and your high interest savings account only paid 3%. Well then you've actually gone back 1% and if you go back 1% year after year, soon you'll be buying far less with your money.

Bryce: Well, we've got an example here, Ren, you were born in 1992? So $100 saved back in 1992 would buy you what $47 can buy you today.

Ren: Yes. So that's the rate of inflation in the past 32 years. Our purchasing power of our money has more than halved. So a hundred dollars to the equivalent of $47 today. Put another way- to buy a hundred dollars worth of stuff in 1992. Today we would need $211 to buy that same amount of stuff.

That is why inflation is the dreaded "I" word, but flip it around because that's the dreaded "I" word, but there's also a much loved "I" word. And that is; investing.

Bryce: Yes. We love that. I word over here just as much as index, but investing is, as we said, putting money to work so that it works as hard as you do. That means trying to find assets that beat that inflation rate.

Ren: So let's take this 1992 example, a hundred bucks in 1992 when I was born, if my parents had been savvy investors and invested it in the Australian all ordinary index with dividends reinvested, that $100 would now be $1,020.

Want to check out the full episode? All Get Started Investing episodes are now released on their own YouTube channel:

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