📈 Oil is back near pre-war levels | Meet the latest Reddit meme stock

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The Big Picture

• Oil has almost completed its round trip. Before the first missile was fired in the US-Iran war, the Brent Crude oil price sat around $64. It is now $72, after briefly dropping below $70, well down from a mid-war high of $126. It will take some time for the lower price to flow through to the bowser, but it is a welcome sign. (NY Times)
  
  

• Australia’s unemployment rate drops to 4.4%. The Australian economy continues to look resilient after it added 40,000 jobs in May, the participation rate held steady at 66.7% and unemployment dropped from 4.5% in April. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Government to remove ‘widow’s tax’ in latest budget change. Jointly-owned properties will continue to enjoy their grandfathered tax benefits even if one owner dies or there is a divorce. This was flagged as a risk by independent senator David Pocock as the tax bill moves through the Senate. (AFR)
  
  

• Australia has a new political party: Community Strong Australia. Teal independents Zali Steggall and Allegra Spender have confirmed plans for the new political party but are yet to convince any of their cross-bench colleagues to join them. (ABC)
  
  

• Europe struggles with the heat. Britain and Italy both issued heat warnings while France and Spain have closed schools in parts of the country. Across the continent, temperatures are consistently in the low-40’s degrees Celsius. (CNN)
  
  

• Finland reports a 12.7% unemployment rate. This is up from 10.5% last year, giving the Nordic country the highest unemployment rate in Europe. Finland is heavily export-dependant and has suffered from wars in Ukraine and Iran. (Helsinki Times)

Companies in the news

• Micron reports 346% increase in revenue. The memory chip maker reported third-quarter revenue of $41.5 billion, up from $9.3 billion this time last year, as quarterly profit rose 15-times from $1.9 billion to $28.2 billion. The company’s share price is up 719% in the past 12 months. (FT)
  
  

• SK Hynix prepares for US listing. The South Korean memory chip maker recently overtook Samsung to be South Korea’s most valuable company. Now it is preparing to raise up to $29.4 billion as it lists on America’s Nasdaq exchange. (Reuters)
  
  

• A2 Milk declares $300 million special dividend. The dairy company announced the dividend following regulatory approval from China to transition its product registrations and use the a2 brand in China. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Anthropic accuses Alibaba of industrial-scale theft. The American AI giant has accused its Chinese counterpart of using up to 25,000 fraudulent accounts to access Claude and get around US restrictions on the technology. (AFR)
  
  

• Google loses two more AI researchers. Two core Gemini contributors announced they were leaving to join Anthropic. This follows exits of Nobel laureate John Jumper to Anthropic and Noam Shazeer to OpenAI. (Yahoo)
  
  

• Judo Capital has its largest ever one-day fall. The Australian neobank saw shares fall 41% after cutting its profit guidance and explaining that losses on loans were higher than previously forecast. (Capital Brief)

Reddit’s latest meme stock: Wendy’s

Shares in the US fast-food chain hit a seven month high after a post on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit. The post encouraged users to “save Wendy’s before it’s too late”.

That was enough for the stock to jump 42% in one day. While there is a lot of short interest in Wendy’s, it isn’t to the same level as GameStop back in 2021, so don’t expect a similar prolonged short squeeze. (CNBC)

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Get Started. Invest Regularly. Stay the Course.

This is a clip from an Equity Mates interview with Scott Phillips, Chief Investment Officer at Motley Fool Australia.

Ren: If there was one lesson you could teach every new investor, what would it be?

Scott: Start. Invest regularly. Stay the course and be diversified. They’re probably the four, right, if you stay the course with the wrong stock, you and get smashed. So I’m assuming you’re investing in a decent portfolio.

If you can start young, you can lag the market by a couple of percentage points a year and still retire a millionaire, right? You don't have to be very good. In fact, people say, oh, you’re young, you can take more risk. I would say exactly the reverse. You’re young. Why the hell would you take the risk? You can just let compounding do the work for you and retire really wealthy.

If you can save, start, save regularly, invest it half decently, even reasonably ordinarily. You can lose to the average and still do really, really, really well. Now, don’t lose to the average, buy an ETF or beat the market, but they’re your opportunities, right?

I really want to tell people, investing shouldn’t be exciting. Again, next Afterpay, right? That’s our marketing [at Motley Fool]. Once we get you inside the door, we say, “Thanks for coming. We’ll try and find your next Afterpay. By the way, this is not about hitting refresh on your computer. This is not about making a hundred percent returns in six months time. This is not about the ups and downs and the dopamine and the excitement.”

If you want excitement, go to the racetrack. Investing should be slow and boring. Aesop, the more I learn about investing, guys, I’ve mentioned Aesop’s Hare and Tortoise way too many times in the last 12 months because whenever I come back to it, it’s literally just that. We know. We were told thousands of years ago, how do you invest? Well be the tortoise. Literally just be the tortoise. And compounding is so magical. It does the work for you.

Get started. Invest regularly. Stay the course. Be diversified. 99% of people who do that will be extraordinarily stoked at retirement with how much money they’ve amassed.

Want to hear more great tips like this? We’ve compiled 5 pieces of advice from great Australian investors on the Equity Mates Clips channel.

• Copper is the metal at the heart of everything. From infrastructure to AI, emerging middle class to the energy transition, copper is central to it all. Hear about the investment side of this critical metal in today’s episode of Equity Mates Investing. (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

• Check out a special edition, on-location Buy or Sell. Ally Selby was at the Morgan Stanley conference speaking to some of Australia’s top investors about their favourite stocks. Don’t miss it. (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)