This week on Equity Mates

Hey there Equity Mate,

This is the final week that our Community Survey is open, so if you’re yet to complete it, now is your opportunity.

We use the survey to understand more about the community we serve, the partners we work with and to help with the direction of our content.

By completing it in full you will also go in the running to win $500.

We’ve got a big week of content coming up, here’s what you can expect across Equity Mates Investing and Get Started Investing.

• Equity Mates Investing (Apple | Spotify)

  • Monday: Semiconductors beyond Nvidia, Book club is back & introducing: Pimp my Portfolio

  • Tuesday: Buy or Sell: Adam Keily with Julian McCormack

  • Thursday: Ren's 2024 portfolio, ETF question & expert stock pitch: Australian Financial Group

  • Friday: Uncovered: Emyria - Bringing psychedelic-assisted therapies to Australia

• Get Started Investing (Apple | Spotify): 

  • Tuesday: $100 challenge: Sam's making money with Lego

Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss any of these episodes. And if you have thoughts on what you’re enjoying or what you’d like to see changed, you know how to let us know - the Equity Mates Community Survey.

Your questions, answered

Adam asked via email:

I’m 32 years old. How much risk should I take in my investments at this stage in my life?

We put Adam’s question to Luke Laretive, CEO & Portfolio Manager at Seneca Financial Solutions.

Generally, a lot more that a 55-, 65- or 75-year-old, essentially because you’ve got more time to recover from any period of negative returns. That said, your risk profile is personal – a 25-year-old single parent with a new business probably doesn’t have the same ability to tolerate capital loss or portfolio drawdown as a 25-year-old trust fund beneficiary. It’s all relative.

Just because you’re young and can tolerate the volatility that’s expected with a ‘high growth’ or ‘growth’-style asset allocation, doesn’t mean you’re gambling your hard-earned savings on individual shares (or worse). It means younger people can potentially allocate a higher proportion of your investable capital to growth assets, like diversified share portfolios made up of companies from Australia and around the world. Most high growth options (which while not exclusively for young people, are typically used by younger people) have 80-90% of their asset allocation in domestic and international shares (or other growth assets).

Whether you choose an index-following ETF (which gives you access to all the listed companies in a particular geographic area) or employ fund managers to select shares on your behalf, it’s largely up to you. Whatever you do, just make sure its accurately measured, benchmarked, and properly accounted for each year.

If you would like to book a time with Luke to review your portfolio, discuss the markets or help you with your financial goals, click here to get started. 

If you have a question you’d like answered, hit us up at ask@equitymates.com

Take the next step on your investing journey with Rask + Equity Mates courses

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For starters, we have the free Get Started Investing course. It covers all the basic of what is the stock market, how do I start investing and how do I build a portfolio.

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What we’ve been reading

Expectations were high for Nvidia. It surpassed them.

Last week, the investing world was focused on one company, and one company only: Nvidia. The tech giant briefly touched $2 trillion in valuation after reporting a record breaking quarter to the market.

Here are just some of the numbers to give you a sense of how quickly Nvidia is growing:

• Full year revenue for 2023: $60.9 billion, up 126% year-on-year

• Q4 quarterly revenue: $22.1 billion, up 265% year-on-year

• Data centre revenue for Q4: $18.4 billion, up 409% year-on-year

• A profit margin of 55.6% for Q4, up from 23.4% in Q4 last year

We couldn’t avoid the hype, and in today’s Equity Mates Investing episode we discuss Nvidia’s results and the opportunities in semiconductors beyond Nvidia (listen on Apple or Spotify).

In this email we wanted to share two articles that break down what exactly Nvidia is doing so well and where it might go next.

If you want to get your head around the biggest story in investing, these two articles are a good place to start.

Two years on, what’s next in Ukraine?

We were in two minds about including this article - after two years of conflict in Ukraine, many people are starting to get weary of the ongoing conflict. But we thought it was important to include, to keep the conflict and the broader geopolitical and economic implications front of mind.

It is easy to forget, that many of the current inflation challenges were sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - it caused energy and food prices to spike as the world lost access to Ukraine’s production and boycotted Russia’s.

At the two year anniversary of the war, Foreign Policy magazine asked 8 experts to share their thoughts on what comes next, and the broader geopolitical implications of what they think will play out.

From predictions of a long, protracted stalemate, to a new Cold War, to a reinvigorated Europe, these predictions show just how much is uncertain (and also how much the authors project what they want to happen in their predictions of what will happen - see: Time to call Putin’s bluff).

Like it or not, the outcome of this conflict will define geopolitics for the next generation. Many American allies are watching and seeing it as a test of American resolve. China is watching for much the same reason. European leaders are considering what a post-Ukraine European security architecture looks like, and Putin sees it as a critical step in returning Russia to its former glory and regaining the superpower status it lost when the Soviet Union collapsed.

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To grab a free copy, just refer 4 people to this Equity Mates mailing list using your unique referral link below.