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Here’s what you need to know today

• Australia’s inflation rate slowed in May, down to 2.1% for the past 12 months. This is down from 2.4% in April. Trimmed mean inflation, the RBA’s preferred measure of underlying inflation, came in at 2.4%, down from 2.8% in April. (ABC News)
  
  

• America’s tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index reached a record high while America’s main stock market index, the S&P 500, closed within striking distance of its all-time high. This comes despite all of the chaos happening in America and around the world, and is a reminder of why we choose to stay invested and avoid trying to time the market. (Reuters)
  
  

• An intelligence assessment from America’s Department of Defence found that America’s strikes on Iran did not destroy its nuclear programme, and instead only set it back by months. The White House called the assessment “flat-out wrong”. (AFR)
  
  

• Israeli forces killed at least 40 people in Gaza. Reuters reported that almost half of those killed had been attempting to reach an aid centre. The Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said there had been no incident near the site that warranted such use of force. (Reuters)
  
  

• The same week that Tesla launched its first robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, Waymo and Uber have announced the next city for their combined robotaxi service - Atlanta, Georgia. This will be Waymo’s 7th city with the company already handling 250,000 paid robotaxi rides each week. (Quartz)
  
  

• Australian small cap favourite DroneShield saw shares rise 20% after the company announced a $61.6 million deal with the European Union for handheld drone detection and counter-drone systems. This was the biggest single order in DroneShield’s history and topped the company’s entire revenue for 2024. (Small Caps)
  
  

• Accounting platform Xero has continued its push into the US after announcing plans to buy New York-based accounting platform Melio Payments for US$2.5 billion. (Bloomberg)
  
  

• A federal judge in America ruled it was “fair use” for Anthropic to train its AI models on books without authors’ permission. This is a huge win for AI companies looking for content to train their models. However, the judge did rule against Anthropic when it came to their stash of more than 7 million pirated books they were storing. (Reuters)
  
  

• As the NATO summit kicks off, there is a lot for the trans-Atlantic alliance to work through. The bedrock of NATO is the Article 5 mutual defence commitment, which US President Trump cast doubt over by suggesting there were “numerous definitions” of Article 5. (Bloomberg) Trump is pushing NATO members to target spending 5% of GDP on defence, up from 2% today. (Associated Press) Trump also leaked screenshots of NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte praising him for his actions in Iran and in making Europe pay more for defence. (Truth Social) All-in-all, it will make for a contentious meeting.

What the…?

Here’s a new fruit that could be hitting Australian grocery shelves: purple tomato.

The genetically modified tomato has been edited to include genes from the snapdragon flower, which includes antioxidants that are also in eggplant and blueberries and give the tomato its purple colour. The fruit is currently being assessed by Australia’s Office of the Gene Technology Regulator. (ABC News)

Investing is a lifelong journey

Here’s what you can learn today.

Are physical retail stores having a moment?

This is an excerpt from our conversation with Jason Huljich, joint-CEO of Centuria, on Equity Mates Investing podcast (Apple | Spotify | YouTube)

Question: Are there any other key real estate sectors that we haven't asked you about that you think are interesting?

Retail's interesting. We've been buying a bit of retail.

So we launched a few, what we call, single asset funds. Retail we've really liked in the last probably 24 months because through Covid what you saw was a lot of the retailers actually did quite well. So especially things like neighbourhood shopping centres. Neighbourhood shopping centres are Coles or Woollies with 10 specialties [stores]. The trade in those Woollies actually went up through Covid.

The other sector that we've actually seen perform well is what we call large format retail. So that's those big centres that have Harvey Norman and JB HiFi and the likes in them. So what we've been buying recently is neighbourhoods in large format, mainly in single asset funds. Retail's been really good.

It has been interesting, and this is a thematic across all the sectors, what's happened through Covid is construction costs have gone through the roof. To build anything or to renovate your home costs are more than done.

How that flows through to commercial property is to build anything is a lot more expensive, which makes developments hard to stack. So the amount of cranes on the skyline, the amount of new developments, it's just not happening in a lot of sectors. So in two, three, four years time when no supply comes through, demand is still coming through. So you've got these huge demand tailwinds and you've got a supply headwind, which is going to be very good for a lot of sectors.

Interested to watch our full conversation with Jason? Check it out on the Equity Mates YouTube:

Today’s sponsor is The Top 1% Podcast

Join Equity Mates regular and Top 1% Podcast host Sam Gordon as he chats with pioneering entrepreneurs, and visionary experts to uncover the habits, strategies, and mindsets behind elite success.

In this episode, Sam shares his journey - from growing up on a rabbit farm earning $38k a year, to uncovering the real path to financial freedom through property. He opens up about the biggest mistakes he made, and how those lessons fuelled the creation of Australian Property Scout and School of Property to help others achieve the same success.

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