Here’s what you need to know today

• The Australian government plans to ban social media for children under the age of 14. As someone who has been following Jonathan Haidt for a while, I love this move but there are questions. Namely, where do we draw the line between social media and the rest of the internet and how will we enforce it.
  
  

• Rupert Murdoch is taking it from all sides. His children are suing him as he tries to change the rules of the family trust that controls News Corp and now activist investors Starboard Value are trying to end his control with a shareholder proposal. Starboard want shareholders to vote to end the dual-class share structure that allows Murdoch’s family trust to have 41% of voting power while owning just 14% of shares.
  
  

• Yesterday we wrote that Apple’s iPhone 16 announcement would be seen as a test of their AI strategy and shares would fall if it disappointed. Shares initially fell 2% only to recover their ground and finish the day flat. So I guess we can say investors shrugged. Here’s a look at what they announced.
  
  

• Outside the AI announcements, Apple’s product updates showcased some pretty cool features. Two of our favourites: Apple Watches will soon feature a sleep apnea detector (surely that’s good for ResMed?) and Apple’s AirPods 2 will be able to double as hearing aids (maybe not so good for Cochlear?)
  
  

• Elon Musk has said SpaceX would land on Mars within 2 years. The planned unmanned mission is expected to be a precursor to a manned mission that Musk hopes will happen in the next 4 years. Musk has a habit of exaggerating timelines, but we can’t believe we may be landing on Mars before we get GTA 6

What the…?

First it was cocoa prices spiking with drought in West Africa. Then it was coffee prices spiking with droughts in both Brazil and Vietnam. Now it is orange juice futures that are trading at 3x their price two years ago as drought and crop disease destroy yields in Brazil.

All these stories have occurred in the past 6 months. All examples of extreme climate and weather events that are becoming more frequent. And sadly, we’re all feeling (and paying for) the effects.

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

This is an excerpt from our conversation with Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer (ASX: FLN) on the Equity Mates Investing podcast.

Question: Why is Australian housing so unaffordable?

Australian house prices have gone up 86 times in 61 years. And the reason why is because politicians have chosen a path of easy, relentless growth.

Rather than talking to the engineers, the scientists, the entrepreneurs about what to do to grow the economy and actually build a diversified, strong and complex and sophisticated economy; instead, they've chosen to go the easy, relentless path of growth, and that is by pumping the housing market to the mother of all bubbles.

And when I mean the mother of all bubbles, it is the mother of all bubbles.

In 2008 in the Global Financial Crisis in the United States, Australians were already twice as indebted to housing than the Americans. And the Australian banks were twice as exposed to residential mortgages, as the US banks, three times the British banks and four times the Hong Kong banks. And Hong Kong has got the most expensive property market in the world.

What we have done for this easy, relentless growth is to have one of the world's leading insane immigration programs. We bring a lot of people into this country, an astronomical number of people in this country, to the point where now in New South Wales, for example, I think the stats are currently that 33% of people have both their parents born here and 43% have both parents born overseas. Something like 30% of people in the country were born overseas. I think New South Wales it's 35%. So it's a huge program in New South Wales, a population of only 8,730,000. The more people you've got in a certain area, the more that house prices stay up and go up. And the path of easy, relentless growth that the governments have had is to keep blowing the biggest bubble you can possibly blow. And now we're at the point where it is insane, I think.

You know, there's a dog box out in Erskineville for $4 million. Yeah. So, I mean, how does that make any sense? At $1.2 million, which was the median household price, you know, a couple of months ago, it's mathematically impossible to pay off with the median household income.

Want to hear Matt’s full view on Australia’s housing market? Listen on the Equity Mates podcast (Apple | Spotify) or watch clips on YouTube:

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