Editor’s Pick

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) needs to follow California’s lead and get on this! 

I want to tell you about a product called Kalibrate Fuel Pricing. Kalibrate, the company that provides artificial intelligence (AI) driven fuel pricing and market analytics software, is owned by the private equity firm Hanover Bidco.

Kalibrate Fuel Pricing requests petrol station owners to provide sensitive, non-public data, including historical gas sale costs, volumes, forecasted costs, and margins. Using this private data alongside publicly available information, it offers pricing recommendations for petrol. Kalibrate describes this approach as “competitor-led fuel pricing decisions” and claims to provide “complete visibility on your competitors.”

That all sounds reasonable when thinking about an individual station using the service. continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Companies, Editor's Pick, Energy / Resources, Market commentary.

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A layman’s guide to CrossBorder Capital’s latest financial outlook.

The core problem: A tsunami of government debt

Macroeconomic research house CrossBorder Capital’s Michael Howell recently summarised the dilemma confronting the U.S. Federal Reserve under newly appointed Chair Kevin Warsh.

For most, the use of proprietary indicators and the esoteric interpretations is likely to be skimmed over, but sometimes a bit of additional attention pays dividends. Right now might be one of those junctures.

The U.S. government funds its budget shortfalls by issuing bonds – essentially IOUs to investors. To keep this system running smoothly, two things are required: balance-sheet capacity (the financial ability of large institutions to buy and hold these bonds) and market liquidity (the amount of readily available cash circulating to trade them). continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Economics, Editor's Pick, Insightful Insights, Investing Education.

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According to the most bullish investors the current bull market bears little resemblance to the tech bubble of 1999/2000.

That late-90s tech bubble was fueled by a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), which was reflected in the very high price-to-earnings (P/E) multiples. Today’s bull market is accompanied by much more reasonable valuations suggesting that the rally is merely reflecting an equally steep increase in real earnings.

In early 2000, the tech sector’s forward P/E ratio stood at 55 times, and the broader S&P500 rose to 25 times forward earnings; today, the S&P500 sits on a forward P/E of 20.5 times and the tech sector on 23 times.

The bulls suggest an earnings-driven rally (as reflected in modest P/E ratios) is inherently more sustainable than one built on expanding hope and P/Es. continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Economics, Editor's Pick, Insightful Insights, Market commentary, Market Valuation.

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The Federal Labor Government’s 2026-27 Budget tax reform package represents the most sweeping overhaul of Australia’s investment tax landscape in nearly three decades. By winding back the traditional pillars of wealth creation – specifically the 50 per cent Capital Gains Tax (CGT) discount and negative gearing on established residential property – the government has fundamentally altered the math of investing.

While today’s major policy concessions (including exemptions for testamentary trusts and a step back from sweeping ministerial discretionary powers) provide some targeted relief, the core framework remains intact.

The clear takeaway for investors is a systemic structural shift: the traditional focus on heavily leveraged capital growth has been severely compromised, making high-yielding income generation far more appealing. continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Aura Group, Economics, Editor's Pick, Feature Article, Insightful Insights, Investing Education, Popular, Property.

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Proposed changes to negative gearing, capital gains tax (CGT) and new Australian Taxation Office (ATO) rules for holiday homes could significantly alter the economics of property investing in Australia. By reducing the tax advantages associated with property ownership, the changes may weaken demand across several investor groups and influence property prices over time.

Drawing on supply and demand principles, this whitepaper paper examines how investors, rentvesters, property flippers, holiday homeowners and discretionary trusts could be affected. It also explores the potential impact on borrowing capacity, resale demand and the attractiveness of established residential property compared with new builds. continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Aura Group, Economics, Editor's Pick, Market commentary, Popular, Property, Whitepapers.

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“You cannot be afraid of new technologies. I think that this tenet passed Warren Buffett by. As he is the greatest investor of all time, I think it’s important to recognise that if he were not afraid of product cycles and obsolescence, he would have made much more these last few years than he did. Now, I know we shouldn’t criticise someone of his unbelievable prowess, but we must also recognise that it was wrong not to include technology stocks in the portfolio…[they] are creating too much wealth to ignore.”

With Musk now the world’s first recorded trillionaire after SpaceX’s float last Friday, you might be thinking the above quote has merit, especially as 60 per cent of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio is sitting in cash. 

But the above quote, by Jim Cramer, was made in January 2000, just three months before the Dot.Com crash wiped 76.81 per cent from the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite index and investors saw an estimated US$5 trillion in paper wealth evaporate between 2000 and 2002. continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Economics, Editor's Pick, Global markets, Market commentary, Technology & Telecommunications.

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I joined Kirsten Aiken on ABC The Business to discuss the challenges facing Australia’s retail sector. With higher interest rates slowing the economy and uncertainty around proposed tax changes weighing on consumer confidence, spending has softened across age groups. We explored the pressures facing traditional retailers, the accelerating shift to online shopping, the impact of global competitors, and why department stores such as Myer and David Jones continue to face long-term challenges as consumer habits evolve.

Watch here: Challenges grow for the retail sector, Glue the latest to close. continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Companies, Consumer discretionary, Economics, Editor's Pick, Insightful Insights, Market commentary.

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Since January 1999, Macquarie Bank’s shares have risen almost 1,400 per cent, and that excludes the returns from reinvesting dividends. That’s just capital gains alone.  Assuming the Federal Labor Party is voted out, and their capital gains tax disincentives are unwound, there could be another Macquarie-Bank-like 1999 opportunity. The opportunity to buy a mini Macquarie on the ground floor might be Magellan Financial Group (ASX: MFG).

On 11 June 2026, the Australian Competition and Consumer Comission (ACCC) decided to approve Magellan Financial Group Ltd’s (MFG) proposed acquisition of the remaining shares in Barrenjoey Capital Partners Group Holdings Pty Limited (Barrenjoey) that it does not already own, in return for equity in MFG (the Acquisition).

Magellan Financial Group’s acquisition of the remaining shares in investment bank Barrenjoey was approved by shareholders in April 2026. Completion is expected in early July 2026.

Here are the key terms and structural details of the merger: continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Companies, Editor's Pick, Financial Services.

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The defining irony of today’s stock market has got to be the yawning chasm between asset prices and their intrinsic values. As equity indices scale ever higher peaks, and as hyper-parabolic Price-to-Earnings (P/E) and Price-to-Sales (P/S) ratios are normalised, the underlying truths don’t seem to have changed. Eventually even this bubble must bust.

U.S.-based senior economist at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, DC, and author of the ‘AI Bubble Monitor’, and U.S.-based antitrust and policy analyst Matt Stoller reckon this dynamic can be attributed to something Stoller calls the “Number Go Up Rule”– a systematic rewiring of institutional incentives to ensure corporate valuations ascend at all costs, and frequently favouring speculative mania over fundamentally productive or socially additive enterprises. continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Economics, Editor's Pick, Global markets, Insightful Insights, Investing Education, Market commentary, Popular.

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Bullish investors believe AI is a new, infinite fourth factor of a nation’s production and wealth creation. In the past, we had labour, capital and land as production inputs, all of which were, of course, finite. Land provided the raw materials, labour the muscle and the mind to transform them, and capital was the tool.

Enter AI. The transformative aspect of this fourth ingredient is that, unlike the physical limitations of land or the finite hours of the human workforce, data is a resource that is functionally unlimited. And, importantly, it’s the only factor of production that actually grows more abundant the more we use it.

This article was first published in The Australian on 27 May 2026.

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Editor's Pick, Global markets, In the Press, Insightful Insights, Investing Education, Market commentary, Market Valuation, Popular, Technology & Telecommunications.

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