Here’s what you need to know today

• The US and EU have finally secured a trade deal, covering what both sides call the “world’s most valuable economic relationship”, worth $2.8 trillion annually. The agreement, building on talks last month between Ursula von der Leyen and Donald Trump, will see tariffs on most European exports to the US capped at 15%, nearly half the rate Trump had threatened, but higher than the UK’s 10% deal. In return, the EU will charge zero tariffs on "all US industrial goods", including agricultural products such as fresh fruit and vegetables, pork, bison meat, and tree nuts. (BBC)

  
  

• The White House confirmed on Friday that the US will take a 9.9% stake in Intel, converting $8.9bn in grants, issued to Intel under the CHIPS Act, into an equity stake. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on X that Intel Ceo Lip-Bu Tan had struck a deal "that's fair to Intel and fair to the American People." The investment marks the latest unusual government intervention, following a recent deal allowing AI chip giant Nvidia to sell its H20 chips to China in exchange for receiving 15% of those sales. (Reuters)
  
  

• Guzman y Gomez posted its first full-year result as an ASX-listed company, with sales up 23% to $1.18bn and a net profit of $14.5m. CEO, Steven Marks shared plans to open a further 15 restaurants in the U.S. despite losing $13.2m on its US stores in the last year, up from a $6.5m loss in the previous financial year. Doubts over its ability to crack the US market weighed heavily on investors, sending shares down 18% on Friday and now 40% year-to-date. (SMH)
  
  

• Poultry producer Inghams Group also saw its shares tumble on Friday, after reporting an 11.5% fall in full-year profit to $102m, hit by higher feed and labour costs and softer demand. Management pointed to efficiency measures to stabilise earnings, but investors weren’t convinced, sending the stock down 20% on the day. (Capital Brief)

  
  

• The world’s largest retailer Walmart reported annual revenue had grown 5% to $117.4bn and raised it’s full year sales and profit guidance. However, its second-quarter profit was lower than expected, registering Walmart's first earnings miss in more than three years. Shares closed down 1% on the day but remain up 28% over the past year. Walmart currently has a P/E ratio of 36, about double the industry median and nearly triple rival Target’s. (Quartz)

  
  

• OnlyFans has paid its owner Leonid Radvinsky a $701m dividend ahead of a potential $8bn sale of the platform. Financial accounts filed in the UK on Friday showed creator numbers rose 13% to 4.6m in 2024, while fan accounts climbed nearly 25% to 377.5m. The filing also showed the platform paid $5.8bn to creators over the year. (Bloomberg)

  
  

• French dairy giant Lactalis, the world’s largest dairy group, has agreed to buy Fonterra’s global consumer brands for $3.4bn, a deal that will make it Australia’s biggest dairy company. Japan’s Meiji and ASX-listed Bega Group were also hoping to buy Mainland Group, as the business is known, before Lactalis was granted exclusivity to negotiate a deal earlier this month. (AFR)
  
  

• Plans for a $10bn offshore wind farm in the NSW Hunter region have collapsed. Norway’s Equinor withdrew from its joint venture with Australian partner Oceanex to build the Novocastrian Offshore Wind Farm off Newcastle and Port Stephens. The project had been expected to play a significant role in Australia’s offshore wind rollout. (ABC)
  
  

• US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled the central bank could begin cutting rates as soon as September, noting that with inflation cooling and the labour market easing “the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance.” His remarks at Jackson Hole sent markets sharply higher on Friday, with the S&P 500 up more than 1.5% and the Dow Jones nearly 2%, as investors priced in a pivot from the Fed. (Quartz)
  
  

• Coca-Cola is exploring a potential sale, of Costa Coffee, which it bought in 2018 for more than $5bn. The chain operates in 50 countries, with more than 2,700 coffee shops across the UK and Ireland and over 1,300 more outlets globally. Coca-Cola chief executive James Quincey told analysts that Costa had “not quite delivered” and was “not where we wanted it to be from an investment hypothesis point of view”. (Financial Times)

What the…?

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that some frozen shrimp imported from Indonesia may have been contaminated with radiation.

Among those flagged were Walmart’s Great Value shrimp, which tested positive for Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope. Reassuringly, the FDA stressed that none of the shrimp actually entered the U.S. food supply.

Still, to be sure, the agency recommended a full recall on any products from BMS Foods that were shipped after the date of first detection. (Quartz)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

Skip the coffee and invest instead?

This is taken from the Get Started Investing episode ‘How much money do you need to start investing?’ (Apple | Spotify | YouTube)

How much do I need to get started investing?

Bryce: The answer Ren is not a lot. It may not feel like investing in small amounts is worth it, but we are here to convince you that it is.

Ren: Something we like to say here at Equity Mates is try and get rich slow because you just might do it. Even if you're investing small amounts, if you're thinking long-term and you're thinking investing consistently, you can build a meaningful portfolio and we have the numbers to back it up. So let's get into it. Bryce, how much is the coffee costing you these days?

Bryce: Me personally, $7.70.

Ren: What!?

Bryce: Yeah, it's a G up! I don't buy coffee anymore. The average person, I would probably say five bucks because I've gone double shot and soy milk so I get stung on both of those.

Ren: Okay, well I'm glad you said five bucks because that's the number we've used for this worked example. So let's say $5 a day for coffee. And let's say rather than buying a coffee, you invest that money instead.

Now what's the share market going to return? Well, between 1900 and today, 125 years of Australian share market history tells us the average annual return with dividends invested is 13%. Now people think 13% is a pretty punchy number. They think it might be too aggressive, but I mean it's 125 years of stock market history.

So let's use 13% to illustrate the example. If you invested that $5 a day rather than buying the coffee after 10 years, you would have invested $18,250.

But with the stock market returning 13% a year, you would have a portfolio of $33,633. You've basically doubled the amount of money you invested.

Now that's not bad, but I'm not feeling rich. So let's extend the timeline. Remember the saying: try and get rich slow and you just might do it. Let's go to 30 years. So after 30 years of making coffees at home and in the office rather than buying, you would've invested $54,750, but your portfolio would be worth $535,284

Bryce: 10 bagged.

Ren: You'd have more than half a million dollars and you 10 x your money.

Bryce: I mean that's only with $5 as well.

Ren: Yeah, Imagine If you did $7.70! So all I did was change the $5 to $8 and after 30 years it went from $535,000 to $856,000.

So I think that again just illustrates the small changes we make today. The extra dollar we find to invest, the coffee we make at home and the money we put to work, whatever it is, they really do compound over time. So if we can build those consistent habits, even if it's a small dollar amount, it can really add up over time.

Want to check out the full episode? Get Started Investing episodes are now released on their own YouTube channel:

A message from Australian Property Scout

Join Sammy Gordon, Equity Mates’ go-to property expert, as he sits down with APS client Jack for a raw Investor Episode. Alongside his wife Kayleigh, Jack has built a $7.5M portfolio - 12 properties and 16 rentals - all before the age of 31. From a tough upbringing in the Blue Mountains to overcoming family challenges, Jack shares how resilience, strategy, and teamwork turned hardship into long-term wealth.

Tune into the Scouting Australia Podcast on all your favourite platforms.

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