This week on Equity Mates

Hey there Equity Mate,

‘Financial freedom should be accessible to all - not just the older, wealthier among us’

This is one of the core beliefs of Glen Hare, financial advisor and co-founder of Fax & Hare Financial Advice.

Glen will be the guest advisor at our upcoming live event - ‘Equity Mates Live - Ask An Advisor’, where we’ll be unpacking the key strategies to help us all achieve financial freedom.

Glen has been voted amongst Australia's 50 most influential financial advisers (three years running!), is an entrepreneur, cross-fitter, and D&I activist.

Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to learn from the best in the industry. Click here for more information and tickets.

Here’s what we released this week:

Equity Mates Investing (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

• Monday - Top 5 ASX stocks of the past 10 years, TikTok, Temu & Shein make news & a crypto market update

• Tuesday - Buy or Sell: Adam Keily with Andrew Page

• Thursday - The magic of compounding, Speccy Magee returns & when does Boeing become a good investment?

• Friday - Expert: Kerry Craig - Portfolio construction and beating home country bias | JP Morgan Asset Management

Get Started Investing (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

• Tuesday - 6 investing myths holding you back

Your questions, answered

Courtney asked via email:

I have some consumer debt, and a home loan. Should I consolidate my debt? What are the pros and cons?

We put Courtney’s question to advisor and Director of Bold Wealth, Dylan Pargiter-Green.

To book a call with Dylan and the team, click here.

Consolidating Debt can be a great strategy, but it really depends on why you’re doing this, what the debt is secured against and what the interest rate you’re paying is.

If you have a mortgage and a personal loan and a credit card, all of which you’re paying interest on, chances are your mortgage rate is lower than your personal loan and CC. Using this ‘lower risk, higher value’ security can potentially reduce your interest rate overall and provided you stick to the same term of repayments, you should pay the loan off faster with a lower overall interest repayment at the end of the loan.

In the event you’ve got a series of debts that are all around the same level (Credit Cards, Personal or unsecured Investment Loans) consolidating may help you stay on top of all the different repayments. By having one balance and being able to focus your efforts on paying this off each month, you can create a single focus goal and avoid missing payments or letting interest get out of control.

Below is an example of what you can save consolidating debt into the lowest interest rate debt (home loan, in this instance)

If you have a question you’d like answered, hit us up at [email protected] or if you’d like to chat with Dylan and the team, click here

What we’ve been reading

This Is How Much Disney Has Made Off of the Star Wars and Marvel Franchises

Here’s an interesting look at the success of two of Disney’s biggest acqusitions - Marvel and Lucasfilm (aka Star Wars and Indiana Jones). Firstly, as a quick recap:

• In 2009, Disney acquired Marvel for $4 billion

• In 2012, Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion

Recent announcements from the company suggest that Disney has seen at 2.9 times and 3.3 times return on investment respectively, indicating both companies have earned around $12 billion each since joining Disney.

These revelations as Disney’s board wages a proxy fight with activist investor Nelson Peltz. Peltz is pushing Disney to “right size” the movie studio and linear TV networks, and he takes aim at the Disney board as “the root cause of Disney’s underperformance”. Disney’s board are pointing to the enduring success of their acquisitions and their strong library of intellectual property in defense of their record.

Despite an enviable library of intellectual property, all is not well at Disney. The company is struggling to transition from a mainstay in cinemas and on cable TV to an entertainment company for the digital age.

Disney CEO Bob Iger is reportedly looking at all options for his business units, and Disney-watchers expect a big restructure sooner rather than later. Until then, Disney will continue to face pressure from activist investors like Nelson Peltz.

Facebook News Ban in Canada Leaves Small Outlets Struggling

One the biggest stories in the Australian media landscape at the moment is Meta’s decision to pull out of the News Media Bargaining code and their threat that if they are not allowed to pull out, they will ban news on Facebook and Instagram.

This is not an idle threat from Meta. The company has already done something similar in Canada, in response to a Canadian government law that asked the tech giant to pay news publishers for the content shared on its platforms.

This article tells the story of what happened next. Sadly, the loss of Meta’s platforms has been acutely felt by the smaller, digital publishers in Canada.

If this were to happen in Australia, we should expect something similar. The larger media companies - News Corp and Nine - will continue to get direct traffic and already enjoy large subscriber bases. It is the smaller, advertiser-supported digital publishers that will suffer.

This is particularly ironic. The large publishers like News Corp and Nine got the lions share of the money from Meta and Google under the News Media Bargaining Code. And if Meta pull out of news in Australia, they will be fine. It is the small publishers that missed out on any money under the bargaining code who will also suffer the most if Meta withdraw.

This issue is going to only escalate in the coming months. As we navigate through it, we hope the government will listen to all media, not just Nine and News Corp. Otherwise the biggest loser in this whole debate may end up being Australia’s media diversity.

Want to pick up a free copy of the hottest summer read?

Start the new year off on the right foot with our latest book. We outline the absolute simplest way to invest, how you can automate it, and importantly, why it is enough.

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