Insightful Insights

If you are looking for evidence that a high quality business can do well over time, you need look no further than Nick Scali (ASX: NCK). Between FY06 and FY13, an investment in Nick Scali has yielded a compound return of 11.6 per cent per annum (without reinvestment of dividends). This return may not sound high, note that our investment horizon covered one of the most difficult economic period since the Great Depression. continue…

by Scott Shuttleworth Posted in Consumer discretionary, Insightful Insights.

• 6 Comments
• save this article
• POSTED IN Consumer discretionary, Insightful Insights

China’s property slump appears to be deepening.  It might not be on the front pages of our papers nor leading the business radio and TV reports but efforts in recent weeks to kick-start housing sales are failing. continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Insightful Insights, Property.

• 5 Comments
• save this article
• POSTED IN Insightful Insights, Property

Representatives from Deutsche Bank recently visited several companies in China, and concerns over the slowing property market dominated discussions with the predominately bearish outlook for steel consumption and production. continue…

by David Buckland Posted in Insightful Insights, Property.

• 2 Comments
• save this article
• POSTED IN Insightful Insights, Property

If you’re a smaller shareholder in either Westfield Group (ASX: WDC) or Westfield Retail Trust (ASX: WRT), then you might be forgiven for thinking you’re in the middle of World War Three. continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Consumer discretionary, Insightful Insights, Property.

• 3 Comments
• save this article
• POSTED IN Consumer discretionary, Insightful Insights, Property

The make up of consumer price index (CPI) data in many countries is not necessarily closely related to the cost of living. For example, in the US, ‘everyday’ consumer expenditure on food and energy has less than a 25 per cent weighting on their CPI, and is excluded altogether from a ‘core’ inflation. continue…

by David Buckland Posted in Economics, Foreign Currency, Insightful Insights.

• 3 Comments
• save this article
• POSTED IN Economics, Foreign Currency, Insightful Insights

Yesterday, the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics released their biannual Resources and Energy Major Projects—April 2014 report, providing analysis on resources, energy, infrastructure and processing projects. continue…

by David Buckland Posted in Energy / Resources, Insightful Insights, Whitepapers.

• save this article
• POSTED IN Energy / Resources, Insightful Insights, Whitepapers

SAI Global (ASX: SAI) is a company that we’ve identified as having some attractive investment prospects, but one that we prefer to watch rather than invest in. Since it has recently received an indicative and non-binding proposal from private equity, was it the correct decision to wait on the sidelines? continue…

by Ben MacNevin Posted in Companies, Insightful Insights.

• 1 Comments
• save this article
• POSTED IN Companies, Insightful Insights

In October last year, we offered you the opportunity to buy a diversified digital ‘business’ that generated $16.9m in revenue, and made a $4.1m loss in 2013 – for $292m. Whilst this didn’t sound like a great deal (and it wasn’t), the business had amazing prospects according to market announcements that were replete with industry buzzwords such as ‘cloud’, ‘mobile’, ‘payments’ and ‘online scale’. In reflection of this, shares in the company were performing strongly. continue…

by Russell Muldoon Posted in Insightful Insights.

• 1 Comments
• save this article
• POSTED IN Insightful Insights

Boost your Returns Part 2 – It’s Alive!

In Part 1 of our Boost your Returns series, we introduced the idea of using pattern recognition technology to assist in the selection of potential investment candidates. You may recall we proposed using a machine learning model called a Support Vector Machine (SVM) to identify the features that separate good investment opportunities from poor ones. Having done that, we can aim the model at the A1-B3 universe in search of some hidden gems. continue…

by Tim Kelley Posted in Insightful Insights.

• 5 Comments
• save this article
• POSTED IN Insightful Insights

After years of negotiations, Russia’s Gazprom and China’s National Petroleum Corporation have signed a historic gas deal which will supply China with natural gas for the next 30 years. continue…

by David Buckland Posted in Energy / Resources, Insightful Insights.

• 4 Comments
• save this article
• POSTED IN Energy / Resources, Insightful Insights