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Here’s what you need to know today

• The latest data on Australian car sales paints a bleak picture for Tesla. In April, Tesla’s Australian sales were down 76% from April last year, with Chinese rival BYD selling more than six times as many cars in the month. For 2025 so far, Tesla’s Australian sales are down 62% compared to the same period last year. (AFR)
  
  

• US President Trump has announced his latest tariffs: 100% on all movies shot outside the US. In making the announcement he called foreign films a “national security threat”. (Financial Times)
  
  

• Freshly re-elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is focused on trade deals. Reports are he is planning to scrap the $5.2 billion luxury car tax to land a free trade deal with the European Union and will prioritise critical mineral exports to India to advance trade talks with New Delhi. (The Australian)
  
  

• Europe is hoping to attract disaffected American scientists. The EU has launched a €500 million initiative to attract scientists and researchers searching for funding after the Trump Administration froze US government funding for universities and researchers that were supportive of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. (Reuters)
  
  

• OpenAI has changed its plans to become a for-profit company. Instead, it will remain a for-profit subsidiary under the control of the nonprofit that has overseen it since its founding in 2015. The decision reportedly follows discussions with the Attorneys-General of California and Delaware. (NY Times)
  
  

• High-end Australian supermarket Harris Farm Markets reported annual losses of $22 million, up from $6.2 million last year. The supermarket chain operates in QLD, NSW and ACT and saw sales rise 6% to $788 million. The company is reportedly scouting sites to expand into Victoria as well. (AFR)
  
  

• Israel’s security cabinet have voted in favour of a plan to seize control of all of Gaza indefinitely. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, said there would be “no withdrawal”, not even in exchange for hostages. (Washington Post)
  
  

• The Trump Administration has announced plans to pay illegal immigrants US$1,000 to voluntarily return to their country of origin. The Administration said it would also pay for travel assistance. To claim the payments, immigrants must self-report using the US Government’s CBP Home app. (AFR)

What the…?

A student climbing Japan’s Mt. Fuji has had to be rescued twice in one week. The 27-year-old was suffering from altitude sickness and was airlifted to safety after making an emergency call on 22 April.

Authorities was stunned just 4 days later when they were called to airlift him a second time suffering from altitude sickness again after he returned to look for his phone. (Sky News)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

Michael Frazis on investing in AI

This is an excerpt from our interview with Michael Frazis on Equity Mates Investing (Apple | Spotify | YouTube)

How much do you think about the macro when you're thinking about portfolio construction, risk management, and how much you're invested?

I think you need to think about it in a sense that there's very few winners at the moment. The first 10 years of my career, there were huge waves that pushed everything up and down. That has stopped. The number of winners is really narrow. In Australia, if you're on the right side of government spending, that's helpful. The average company is not doing so well. It's the same in the United States. There's a handful of winners, but most stocks are underperforming. Fund managers are underperforming unless they've made big tech their major positions. In terms of my process, I don't think about macro too much. We do a lot of risk modelling now, and I'm relying on that to keep us out of trouble. There are various moments where people got it right, but you almost don't want to get too many of these things right. It'll give you false confidence and then the big one's going to be right around the corner for you.

Let's talk about semiconductors and the broader cloud compute AI story. What's your theory on the whole space?

It's crystal clear there are only a handful of winners. NVIDIA's one, capturing 75% margins. Their closest competitor AMD has barely grown. NVIDIA has the highest margins, the most RD spend, and they’re investing heavily. Taiwan Semiconductor makes the chips, ASML makes the lithography machines. ASML had a weak result—sanctions from China, weakness in PCs, phones, autos, and maybe TSM is squeezing them on margin. In terms of power, it’s probably TSM and NVIDIA. Large language models may be commoditized. Google’s Gemini is very politically correct. Musk’s xAI doesn’t have that lens. At the moment, ChatGPT is dominant. The consensus is that a few foundational models will win. New startups will pre-train on open source models. OpenAI has added this new dimension—letting models think longer. Just asking twice improves results. Now that’s productized. Agents are coming next—AIs speaking to AIs. That's another scaling vector in compute demand. Everyone will have multiple agents, every company will have agents talking to agents.

Prefer to watch this interview? All Equity Mates episodes are now released in-full as videos on YouTube. Check out our conversation with Michael here:

Today’s sponsor is Scouting Australia Podcast

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