If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you’ve seen them: sleek, metallic bipeds performing backflips in China, dancing to Motown, or gingerly stacking the dishwasher or placing a singular box on a shelf. The robotics hype cycle suggests that in four years’ time (2030), a robot will be folding your laundry and helping your nanna out of bed.

Despite billions of dollars invested, however, they remain science experiments confronting daunting technical challenges. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary, Technology & Telecommunications.

• save this article
• POSTED IN Market commentary, Technology & Telecommunications.

However, as the tide of cheap liquidity recedes, we’re seeing a typical correction as investors retreat from riskier assets.

Investors must now navigate a treacherous confluence of shifting narratives just as global liquidity is structurally changing. The dangers are building.

This article was first published in The Australian on 26 February 2026. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in In the Press.

• READ
• save this article
• POSTED IN In the Press.

April 9, last year, Donald Trump postponed his Liberation Day tariffs, fuelling a stock market rally led by artificial intelligence (AI) optimism. That optimism turned to fear this year as joy towards AI’s productivity enhancements morphed into panic about how many businesses it would destroy.

That panic reached an even higher level of urgency last week, when James van Geelen, a thematic investor and former entrepreneur who founded a healthcare company before moving into investment research on Substack, hypothesised that AI would lay waste to the entire global consumer economy, leaving generations of white-collar workers redundant. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary, Market Valuation, Technology & Telecommunications.

• 2 Comments
• save this article
• 2
• POSTED IN Market commentary, Market Valuation, Technology & Telecommunications.

While investors look to the next Nvidia earnings call or the latest OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models) release to predict the future of artificial intelligence (AI), Michael Burry – made famous for making billions shorting markets ahead of 2008 subprime crisis – recently turned to an article entitled Thought without Language, The Narrative of a Deaf-Mute, His First Thoughts and Experiences, in the June 19, 1880, edition of the New York Times.

“The case study is of a teacher at the Columbia Institute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. This particular teacher, Melville Ballard, is also a deaf mute and a graduate of the National Deaf Mute College.” Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary, Technology & Telecommunications.

• 3 Comments
• save this article
• 3
• POSTED IN Market commentary, Technology & Telecommunications.

The HY26 results for Domino’s Pizza Enterprises (ASX:DMP) mark a “reset” phase for the company, as it moves away from a decades-long reliance on deep discounting and volume growth toward a more sustainable, value-driven model.

While this transition will take time, the underlying focus on franchisee health and cost discipline is laying the groundwork for a leaner, more resilient business, perhaps explaining the nine per cent share price bounce at the time of writing (26 February 2026), following an 11 per cent drop the day before on the day of the result’s release. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Companies, Market commentary.

• save this article
• POSTED IN Companies, Market commentary.

I think a lot about how higher-yielding income products, such as the Aura Private Credit Income Fund and the Aura Core Income Fund, might fit in a retiree’s portfolio and how to articulate that. 

It’s a challenge to explain, primarily because we don’t know the future. We don’t know how long we’ll live; we don’t know when/if the stock market might crash, and therefore we don’t know how much we can withdraw each year from our retirement savings because we don’t know how much we will spend in retirement, nor how much we’ll actually have left each year.

It leaves many investors paralysed; “I’ll worry about it tomorrow.” Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Aura Group, Investing Education.

• save this article
• POSTED IN Aura Group, Investing Education.

In a deal announced today, Magellan Financial Group (ASX: MFG) will buy Barrenjoey Investment Bank. For long-term investors, it could provide the opportunity to invest in another ASX-listed investment bank. Could it be the next Macquarie Bank?

Of course, there is a long way to go from Barrenjoey’s $1.6 billion valuation to Macquarie’s $76.3 billion market capitalisation, so this blog is limited to examining today’s deal without commenting on valuation or predicting share prices. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary.

• save this article
• POSTED IN Market commentary.

As we have outlined here on the blog many times over the last year, there just doesn’t seem to be enough money in the hands of potential customers to pay for artificial intelligence (AI) tools that would give hyperscalers a decent return on their intended capital expenditure.

The more they spend, the more revenue and profit they must generate to produce a meaningful return on capital. But the more they invest through capital expenditure, the more competition there’ll be between them (lowering prices for their commoditised products) or the greater the level of overcapacity (also lowering prices).

And when you think about the companies in this race, the capital expenditure (capex) is transforming them from cash-generative, capital-light, high-margin businesses whose services have become verbs into capital-heavy, highly indebted businesses. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary, Technology & Telecommunications.

• save this article
• POSTED IN Market commentary, Technology & Telecommunications.