Here’s what you need to know today

• The Australian Labor Party is considering going to next years federal election with a controversial policy: restricting negative gearing. In 2019, Labor lost the election with a similar policy, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be betting that Australian’s attitudes towards housing have shifted enough in the intervening 6 years. Based on an Instagram poll we put up yesterday, we wouldn’t bet on it.
  
  

• The Australian Bureau of Statistics released Australia’s latest inflation figures: 2.7% in the 12 months to August. This is down from 3.5% in the 12 months to July. A good result, but one that the RBA questioned, as much of this fall in inflation was due to one-off government cost-of-living subsidies.
  
  

• ETF provider Vanguard has been fined $12.9 million by Australia’s Federal Court for misleading investors and failing to exclude certain investments from an ESG-screened bond fund. While Vanguard originally claimed the fund did not invest in fossil fuel projects, investments included projects that funded Chevron, Colonial Pipeline’s oil pipeline in the US, a state-owned crude oil pipeline in Abu Dhabi, and a petroleum company in Chile. Vanguard self-reported once it realised the mistake it had made.
  
  

• The US Department of Justice has sued Visa, alleging that the payments giant is an illegal monopoly. The DoJ will allege Visa entered into agreements with merchants and rivals to maintain their dominance and penalise those seeking alternatives. Visa processes over 60% of America’s card transactions.
  
  

• The headset wars are brewing. After Apple announced their Vision Pro earlier this year, Meta is announcing their latest Quest headset which is cheaper than Apple’s version. Meta will also demonstrate their latest Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses with a camera, microphone and speakers in the frames that will enable Meta AI to see and hear what the wearer does.
  
  

• China’s central bank cut interest rates and announced a stimulus package to help the struggling economy. Hope of growth in China saw commodity prices surge, the oil price jump 2% and the global stock market rise (MSCI all world index up 0.3%).
  
  

• OpenAI has begun rolling out its voice assistant feature to all paid ChatGPT users. Originally launched in May, OpenAI delayed the release to address safety concerns. Once rolled out, users will be able to have a verbal conversation with their AI chatbot.

What the…?

Between phones and social media, we have probably all noticed our attention span getting shorter. Well, now it is showing up in the classroom. In 2022, the US National Council of Teachers of English acknowledged, “The time has come to decentre book reading and essay-writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.”

Now the data is starting to back that up. In 2012, 27% of young teenagers reported that they read for fun. Now that is just 14%.

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

Roblox is Already the Biggest Game In The World. Why Can't It Make a Profit?

If you haven’t heard of Roblox, ask a kid in your life about it. We guarantee they’ve heard of it. On an average day 80 million people play Roblox. Over a month, 380 million people log on. Roblox has 5 times the amount of players as Minecraft and 2.25 times that of Fortnite. It is the biggest game in the word. As a business, it has a $30 billion market cap and makes close to $4 billion in revenue each year.

And yet, it is not profitable.

This deep dive from Matthew Ball is a good look at the world’s most popular game. While it is extremely popular and growing quickly, profitability may always be a challenge. There are some big structural obstacles it faces. First of all, 49% of its revenue goes to platform fees (like Apple’s App Store) as well as the users that generate content for the game.

Ball goes on to unpack the remaining 51% of Roblox’s financials to understand how the company could get profitable. He also unpacks some of the company’s own big predictions for where Roblox is heading over the next 5 years. Between a Fortune 500 company using Roblox in their recruiting process, a school integrating the whole K-12 curriculum with Roblox, A top fashion designer without any real-world experience being discovered on Roblox and a Roblox developer being valued at $1 billion, the company certainly has some grand ambitions.

So if you hadn’t heard of Roblox before now, just wait. You may be hearing a lot more of it in the years to come.

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