The thing about travelling to places such as New York is that you are taken out of your comfort zone. And for a media man like me it means you become a Wall Street Journal and New York Times kind of guy for the time you are in the Big Apple. I learnt years ago […]

In China, 2010 is the year of the tiger with 2009 having been the year of the ox. In Australia, we have the year of the porker. Will our hyper-consumption lead us all to be misery guts or fat guts? After the success of last year’s runaway hit MasterChef (we wrote about that one at […]

Star Wars legend Obi-Wan Kenobi made the advice — “use the force Luke” — famous. A line I pedalled, Kenobi-style, with great success last year, will be re-run this year. And that counsel is — buy the dips. Long-term view Warnings of corrections abound and many of them come from hedge fund managers who are […]

Just when the experts were telling us that the Reserve Bank wouldn’t raise interest rates in February — poof! — like in the smoke of a magic trick, these prophecies have disappeared. And it’s the same ‘experts’ now predicting a rise! Now, I can’t read the minds of the Reserve Bank board, but they are […]

The big picture Over the week, CommSec released its latest ‘State of the States’ economic ranking – an assessment of the economic performance of the states and territories. As you would expect, there was the customary mixed reaction across the country. States and territories at the top of the economic ranking list were quick to […]

For those worried about the doomsday merchants and their prophecies of double dip recessions and share price bedlam, it’s worth noting that the formidable IBISWorld predicts 2010 will be a boom year for Australian business. The experts there go further and predict that the next five years will bring significant economic growth. “The fact that […]

Looking to build your wealth through property? This is my Property Manifesto, which outlines what you should know when trying to build your wealth by speculating on bricks and mortar. The strategies There are two standout strategies. Both cash in on the nice parts of the tax system, but there are a few fine details […]

This time last year, I was cautiously optimistic that we would see an economic and stock market rebound over 2009. I didn’t expect the share price comeback to be as big as it turned out to be, so what is my crystal ball telling me for the year ahead? Market guess What I am about […]

 I have been thinking for the past few weeks on what to write about for the first column of 2010 and felt it would be hard to go past my views on where I think the future lies for Telstra. This may be the year that under the new management team Telstra will again become […]

At the end of last year, the people over at CommSec did a very bad and dangerous thing— they evaluated the accuracy of economic forecasters. And they actually named the country’s best forecasters for 2009. You might not be surprised that CommSec, a part of the CBA team finished in the top five and while […]

Gold target: $1,322 (16.9 per cent away). Gold price now: $1,131. Gold is loved and beautiful to many over the centuries, but to me, the real beauty is in the charts and numbers in its run up from $988 to $1,226 in the two months to December 2009. This run up and subsequent sell off […]

The big picture One development that may have missed your attention over the Christmas/New Year period was a new trade agreement involving Australia. But this isn’t your ordinary garden-variety bilateral free trade agreement, but rather Australia’s largest free trade agreement involving six nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and New Zealand. At […]