Here’s what you need to know today

• Commonwealth Bank “profiting off ill-gotten gains”. That was the allegation of Labor MP Ed Husic to CBA CEO Matt Comyn with over $270m in fees charged to low-income customers. A review by ASIC found these overdraft and account keeping fees were excessive. Whilst other banks have made partial refunds, CBA has refused citing “no instances of unlawful conduct”. (AFR)

  
  

• BHP rejected, again. The Australian mining giant was rejected by the British miner Anglo American for the second time, after first being rebuffed in 2024. Following the talks, BHP announced it will “no longer consider a combination of the two companies.” Instead, Anglo American shareholders are expected to approve a merger with Canadian miner Teck Resources on 9 December. (Capital Brief).
  
  

• US and Ukraine hold peace talks in Geneva. Officials from both countries reported progress in an effort to end the war with Russia. US secretary of state Marco Rubio mentioned that a “tremendous” amount of progress has been made and that he’s “very optimistic”. (Reuters)

  
  

• Victoria’s $50 billion budget blowout. The state’s auditor-general noted at $50.6bn hole over the past 6 years as “debt continues to grow faster than both the economy and revenue”. However, the budget’s loss of $2.6bn in 2024-25 was an improvement on the $4.2bn loss the year before. (AFR)

  
  

• Macquarie eyes logistics giant. Macquarie has lodged an $11.6 billion bid to buy Qube, Australia’s largest vertically integrated import and export logistics provider. Qube’s share price jumped around 17% on Monday off the back of the news. (AFR)

  
  

• Potential new laws in Australia for deepfake AI. Australian’s who are victims of AI deepfakes could soon have the legal protection to sue for emotional damages under a proposed new bill by independent David Pocock. “Currently, unless a deepfake is sexually explicit, there’s very little that you can do as an Australian”. Senator Pocock says Australian’s currently lack the basic safeguards when having their identity copied without their permission. (ABC)

  
  

• Twiggy raises alarm on Russian oil into Australia. Fortescue Mining founder Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest has called out the federal government to take action to prohibit Russian-origin oil from entering Australia. “No family filling their car with petrol should have to wonder whether their money is helping bankroll Putin’s assault on Ukraine” Twiggy told reporters. This comes in response to various media reports that loopholes exist allowing vast quantities of Russian-origin oil to enter Australia since the war began. (SMH)

  
  

• EU and US to discuss ‘steel union’. Trade talks between the EU and US will take place in Brussels today with steel being the major talking point between the two global powers. The prospect of higher tariffs and tighter import restrictions from the formation of a potential union could impact Australia’s steel sector. The meeting from the EU and US is set to offset high US steel tariffs. (ABC)

  
  

• AI to increase inequality says worlds largest sovereign fund. The chief executive of Norway’s $2 trillion national fund has warned that differing levels of access to AI could worsen inequality. The leader of the fund has said that access to advanced AI models becomes increasingly expensive and has the potential to significantly widen the gap between the rich and the poor. (Financial Times)

  
  

• Moderna most shorted stock on S&P 500. The COVID-19 vaccine producer, has become the most shorted company on the S&P 500 as many Americans opt to skip on vaccinations. Short sellers had around US$622m of unrealised profits in 2025 as the shares are down 43% for the year. This is a stark contrast to when the company first joined the S&P 500 back in July 2021 when the company’s operating margin was higher than Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. (Financial Times)
  
  

• Real Madrid to sell 5% of club. The president of Real Madrid has announced plans to bring in external investors for the first time in the club’s history. The sale would change the club’s ownership structure and convert fee-paying fans into shareholders. Real Madrid reported revenue of $1.9bn last year, making it the highest earning club in the world. (Reuters)

What the…?

Eminem is suing Australian beach brand Swim Shady, with the rapper claiming the company name is too close to his trademarked alter ego ‘Slim Shady’. This came a few days after Swim Shady’s US trademark was granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in September. Swim Shady are required by the US law to officially respond to the petition by the end of this week.

The company launched back in 2024 and the name was registered in September 2023. Eminem trademarked the Slim Shady name in the US back in 1999 but only filed a trademark for the same name in Australia in January 2025.

This isn’t the first time Marshall B Mathers III (Eminem’s real name) has taken legal action against an organisation in our part of the world. In 2017, a New Zealand high court awarded in favour of the rapper a NZ$600,000 fine to the National party after it infringed on the artist’s copyright to the song ‘Lose Yourself’ used in a 2014 election campaign. (BBC)

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How will gold perform in 2026?

Ren posed this question to Seb Mullins from Schroders last week in the Equity Mates Investing episode titled ‘Signals for 2026: What Matter, What Doesn’t - Seb Mullins | Schroders (Apple | Spotify | YouTube)

Ren: A theme that really stuck its head up in 2025 in a pretty amazing way is but gold. It was acting more like an AI growth stock than a precious metal store of value. Where does gold go in 2026?

Seb: We've been bullish on gold for a while now. Higher inflation, loss of central bank independence, fiscal stimulus that's normally good for gold as well. Saying it's an inflation hedge is a bit of a cop out. It's not always an inflation hedge, but it's a hedge against currency debasement and a hedge against fiscal large stimulus and central bank losing independence. So we do like gold. If you think equity bond correlations, which they are now positive is going to mean that a 60/40 portfolio is less likely to, the bonds are less likely to protect your equities if they're moving in tandem, you want to find other hedges. So gold fits the bill. So we've liked gold. We've allocated to gold. We've had gold miners as well in the portfolio. They’ve done very well. So we topped up gold after Jerome Powell (US Federal Reserve Chair) came out dovish at the Jackson Hole conference, and we sold it at the beginning of October because positioning just went crazy. The queues outside Martin Place trying to buy solid gold have all gone now.

Ren: Yep that was crazy

Seb: So for us, structurally, we like gold for those reasons. Inflation, hedge currency, debasement, trying to find something to defend your equities. The positive structural story is that emerging market and is another catchall. But central banks that aren't the west, they've been buying lots and lots of gold because their gold as a percentage of their reserves has been rising. But it's only like 13, 14% of reserves right now. The developed world's more like 45% of reserves and emerging market central banks have told everyone they're trying to play catch up. So there's a lot of buying for them to do if they want to get even close to the developed world in terms of percentage of reserves.

So that's going to be a buy opportunity for the next couple of decades. They're going to buy lots when it's cheap and take the foot off the acceleration when it's expensive. What started recently was the retail or investor sentiment uplifts in the developed world. So September saw the largest inflow to gold ETFs ever, and I think it was two or three times more than the second largest inflow ever, which was 2020. So at that point you had speculative lift and you saw things go crazy in October. So we started to de-risk on that, and we sold about 30% of both our gold and gold miner exposure.

We're starting to buy that back. Now it's basing it around 4,000. That's healthy. If it kept going, that's a speculative life and you want to avoid that. But now it's basing around 4,000. We think it's setting a base for next year to accelerate again. So we do like gold and portfolios for next year, but you got to be tactical of when you get in and out, given some of these speculative lifts tops can be concerning.

Want to watch the full episode? Check it out on the Equity Mates YouTube channel:

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Schroder Investment Management Australia Limited AFSL 226473 ABN 22 000 473 274. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

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