Help us make Equity Mates better in 2025:

Every year we survey the Equity Mates community as we plan the year ahead. The insights really do matter, last year it prompted us to move this email to daily, focus more on YouTube and develop a new show (more on that in the coming months).

So if you enjoy what we do, and want to help make it better, we have a request: help us by completing this year’s Equity Mates Community Survey (Survey Link).

Here’s what you need to know today

• The world remains on Trump watch. The new US President has suggested he will impose a 10% tariff on China on 1 February, alongside the 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada that he also said would start on 1 February. (BBC | Quartz)
  
  

• One of the biggest ever investments in American technology was announced by President Trump and the CEOs of OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. Dubbed ‘Stargate’ the US$500 billion investment in AI infrastructure is an attempt to solidify America’s lead in the nascent industry. (AFR)
  
  

• Qantas has announced it is reducing the value of its loyalty points. Frequent fliers will need to use more points to book international flights, upgrades and flights on partner airlines. For example, the points required to book a Classic Rewards fare will rise by between 5% and 20%. With some of these changes not coming in until August, now might be the time to look at what you can book. (AFR)
  
  

• Nvidia is once again the world’s most valuable company after the semiconductor maker rose 2% to reach $3.45 trillion, overtaking Apple that fell 3% to close at $3.35 trillion.
  
  

• Apple’s fall comes after the technology giant saw downgrades by a number of Wall Street analysts. Globally iPhones sales were down 5% in the last 3 months of 2024, and in China iPhone sales were down 18%. With consumers appearing indifferent to the AI features that Apple has been promoting with the latest iPhone, analysts believe Apple’s next set of numbers may disappoint. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy purchased another $1.1 billion of Bitcoin, taking its total holding to $47.9 billion or the equivalent of 2% of all Bitcoin on the market. For years, MicroStrategy has followed a strategy of raising debt and equity in fiat current (i.e. US dollars) and buying cryptocurrency. Saylor has previously said he wants to raise another $42 billion by 2027. (Bloomberg)
  
  

• Speaking of crypto, $Trump and $Melania continue to fall, down 21% and 44% respectively. (Capital Brief)

What the…?

“What I’ve seen inside Anthropic and out of that over the last few months led me to believe that we’re on track for human-level systems that surpass humans in every task within 2–3 years.”

That is the quote from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei speaking about AI at Davos. While he obviously has a vested interest, if he is correct we can’t imagine the developments in the AI sector we’ll see in the next few years. (CNBC)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

Why Mark Lamonica will never own a house

This is an excerpt from our conversation with Morningstar Australia’s Director of Personal Finance, Mark Lamonica (check it out on Apple, Spotify or YouTube)

Question: What is your approach to property ownership and why?

Mark: Yeah, people obviously think I'm crazy with this whole thing. I wrote this article and I will say at the time, somebody else put a title on it, but it was ‘Why I Will Rent For Life’. They got all this attention, they put me in the AFR and somebody came and took some picture of me like ‘this idiot that is not going to buy a place’.

One of the problems with housing is that, of course, there's these huge cash flows that have to go into it. So not just mortgages, but also just the upkeep in maintenance - the low end of the estimates is 1% of the purchase price. So I don't think that's that attractive given the life I want to live.

And the other problem is if I want to use my financial assets to generate income for my life, locking a bunch of them up in a house isn't a great thing, I think in my worldview. And it's nothing against people that buy houses and it's really thinking about what matters. Is that the way, if I'm totally focused on my net worth, is that the way to get rich? Yeah, probably because it's this huge leveraged bet on property. I don't use any leverage personally in my portfolio.

Do you agree with Mark? Want to hear more of the conversation? Remember, as well as listening, you can now watch all of our content on YouTube:

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