Here’s what you need to know today

• The US stock market fell heavily on Monday night, and the Australian market followed on Tuesday. America’s S&P 500 was down 2.7% with many of the Big Tech stocks leading the way: Apple was down 5%, Microsoft down 4%, Nvidia down 5%, Amazon down 3%, Meta down 5% and Alphabet down 5%. The outlier of the Magnificent 7 stocks was Tesla, down 15%. (News.com.au)
  
  

• Tesla has now given back all of its post-Trump election gains. The carmaker’s stock doubled between the November election and mid-December as investors got excited about Elon Musk’s close relationship with the White House. Since then, the stock has fallen by more than 50%, and it is now lower than where it was priced on Election Day. (Rolling Stone)
  
  

• Australia’s market then followed on Tuesday. By midday it was down 1.8% before having a better afternoon to finish down 0.9% for the day. Notable fallers included Pro Medicus down 10%, Qantas and Pinnacle each down 9% and Xero down 5%. (AFR)
  
  

• A number of large institutions have cut exposure to Australian shares. BlackRock has followed the lead of Bridgewater Associates in cutting exposure to Australia’s market in their global model portfolios. (AFR)
  
  

• The Bitcoin price is also falling. The flagship cryptocurrency has fallen below $80,000 USD for the first time since Trump’s election, down 27% since its high in mid-December. (Decrypt)
  
  

• What has caused these falls? Investors were spooked after Trump acknowledged his economic policies may cause a recession, while the outperformance of Europe, Hong Kong and the UK to start the year has seen investors rotating out of America. (NY Times)
  
  

• Australian gold miner Northern Star has been given clearance for the Federal Court for its $5 billion acquisition of De Grey Mining. There will now be a shareholder meeting on 16 April for a shareholder vote to finalise the deal. (Capital Brief)

What the…?

We’ve written plenty about GLP-1 drugs in this email over the past 18 months, yet this prediction still surprised us. Novo Nordisk believe that half of Australia’s population is a candidate for their weight loss drugs. The Danish pharmaceutical giant points to the fact that 13 million Australians are overweight, with 6.3 million of those being obese.

Obviously, Novo has an incentive to talk their own book, but Australian government numbers back them up. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s finding that 66% of Australian adults were overweight or obese in 2022, which is close to 13 million people. Even more worrying, 28% of children were also overweight or obese. (AFR)

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Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

A golden age of financial advice?

This is an excerpt from our conversation with Andrew Hewison, Managing Director of Hewison Private Wealth for our new podcast Basis Points. Listen on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

Bryce: It feels like there's a severe shortage of advisors in the industry. Is that right?

Andrew: Yep, absolutely. And it was always going to happen when you draw a line in the sand, and I'm not here to debate whether, again, I think the line was placed in the right area, but when you draw a line in the sand and say, look, you now have to cross this, be over this bar in order to continue to provide advice, that there's going to be a period of time where there's going to be a bit of a black hole left.

Now I would say if you want to become an advisor in Australia today, you are stepping into a golden age and a golden opportunity just through simple supply and demand. That brings so many opportunities. There was always going to be a period of time where there's going to have to be a bit of catch-up.

Now, are there enough people going through university and having aspirations of becoming an advisor? I'm not entirely sure. And it is in this period of time, it's to the detriment of the average Australian who might want to get advice. You're always going to be able to get advice but of course supply and demand might dictate you paying more for it. I hope that takes care of itself over a period of time, but unfortunately the situation I think is one we had to have. Otherwise, you continue to have to accept a lower standard and we don't want that.

Remember, all episodes of Basis Points are available to watch as well as listen. Head over to YouTube if you’d prefer to watch this conversation:

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