Here’s what you need to know today

• The biggest story of the weekend was US President Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky. The contentious meeting saw the Ukrainian President asked to leave the White House before a deal was signed. Zelensky immediately flew to the UK where he was warmly embraced by Sir Keir Starmer, with the UK Prime Minister signing a new loan deal to support the embattled country. (ABC News)
  
  

• After a month’s hiatus, President Trump has once again began discussing tariffs on Mexico and Canada. The US President has said he will impose 25% tariffs on all goods coming from America’s two closest neighbours, starting on 4 March. (Reuters)
  
  

• President Trump also announced he would be adding an additional 10% tariff on all Chinese imports, effectively doubling the tariff he imposed on China last month. (The Guardian)
  
  

• Australian casino giant Star Entertainment has told lenders it is just one week away from running out of money. The casino operator has multiple funding offers, including from distressed debt giant Oaktree Capital. Star’s share price is down 97% from its recent highs in October 2021. (AFR)
  
  

• We may not have a date for this year’s Australian Federal Election, but there is no doubt the campaign is on. Over the weekend, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton pledged $3 billion to buy an additional 28 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. (AFR) Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a two year freeze on the beer excise, an inflation-linked tax that has been pushing beer prices up as inflation remained high. (AFR)
  
  

• Nvidia reported another expectation-beating set of earnings on Friday last week. For 2024, full year revenue more-than-doubled to $130 billion and profit was up 145% to $73 billion (note the greater than 50% profit margins as well). As investors dug deeper into the numbers, this was notable: just 3 customers make up more than 30% of Nvidia’s revenue. One to watch if we see Big Tech companies start to waver on their AI spending commitments. (Quartz)
  
  

• China’s AI developments continue to be the story of the past month. After DeepSeek shocked the tech world, Alibaba followed up by announcing its largest ever investment in AI infrastructure. Now Tencent, operator of the WeChat platform, has launched its new AI model, Hunyuan Turbo S, which it claims is faster than DeepSeek’s model. (Reuters)
  
  

• Quantum computing is emerging as an area to watch. Australia’s Silicon Quantum Computing broke records on the quantum computing challenge Grover’s Algorithm, Microsoft announced a new state of matter with their quantum computing chip and now Amazon has announced Ocelot, a quantum computing chip that the company believes could accelerate practical quantum computing by 5 years. (Capital Brief)

What the…?

Japan’s demographic story continues to go from bad to worse. The country’s birth rate fell to a record low in 2024, with the number of babies born dropping 5% to less than 721,000. This is the lowest number of births in Japan since the country started collecting these statistics in 1899.

By 2070, Japan’s population is projected to fall by about 30%, from 123 million to 87 million. At that time, it is estimated that 4-in-10 people will be 65 or older. (AP News)

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Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

One stock for the next 10 years

Community Question: What's your one stock for the next 10 years?

We put this question to Luke Laretive, financial adviser and founder of Seneca Financial Solutions.

Investing is not a ‘get rich quick scheme’, nor is there a ‘silver bullet’ – be it a single stock, a secret Signal chat or an ‘educational’ course. The reason professional fund managers like us run a portfolio of 20-40 companies is because the data shows that owning less (or more) is foolish.

In short, if we could be so certain about the future that we only needed to invest in 1 company, I wouldn’t be answering this question, or managing money for clients. You’d be reading about me as having just overtaken Bezos on the Forbes list.

Further, the idea of holding 1 stock for 10 years, hell or high water, is madness. The whole point of publicly traded equity is to be able to transact it. I buy a company trading at $1 because I think its worth $2. If it gets to $2 within a week, a month, a year… I’d sell it and go find another company trading below my fair valuation.

That said, Bryce and Alec will get angry with me if I don’t give you a stock code, so how about I pick LVMH (MC-FR) and let's bet that inequality gets worse. The 1% continue to spend their ever-growing riches in weird and wonderful ways, in an effort to differentiate themselves and not-so-subtly remind prospective mates of their abundant resources and social status.

Interested in speaking to Luke or another of our hand-picked financial advisers? Fill out the form on our website and we’ll put you in touch.

Today’s sponsor is Australian Property Scout

Join Sammy Gordon, Equity Mates’ regular property expert, as he is joined in the studio by investors Lil and Deklan who built themselves an impressive $4.1m and $1.1m in equity.

Raw, honest, and relentless in their approach, Lil and Deklan share the exact strategies they used to scale so quickly,  proving that with the right mindset, resilience, and action, anything is possible.

Tune in to this inspiring episode on the Scouting Australia Podcast on all your favourite listening platforms.

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