Investment Fundamentals Category - Your Money: Blog Alman Partners

The Invisible Money Generation

How can we teach our children that money doesn’t grow on trees, when the trees have become digital and invisible? For most of us, our first memories of money are of collecting small change, and witnessing our parents using cash to make everyday purchases. This experience, however, is no longer common – the game has changed, and it has become invisible.

Let’s talk numbers

I get it, numbers – not everyone’s cup of tea, especially when there are too many of them being thrown about. But sometimes numbers help – numbers are facts, they are not open to misinterpretation – the context in which they are used of course can be (misinterpreted) but not the numbers themselves. As Pythagoras, the great mathematician said – “Number is the within of all things!”

Rainy Day Investing

Australia, earth’s driest continent, experienced national rainfall in 2017 that was 8% above the historical average. The year was the 30^th wettest on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.¹ But the story is more complicated than that.

7 Keys To Help You Navigate Volatile Markets

Everyone has an opinion about what caused this latest bout of volatility in markets, coming after a long period of relative calm. But the key point for long-term investors is that markets are volatile by nature. Stocks go up and down as information and expectations change. Sometimes, this happens very gradually. Other times it happens more suddenly.

Bitcoin in wallet at Alman Partners True Wealth

Should You Buy Bitcoin? Ask a Different Question First

I received these two messages within three minutes of each other recently:

FAANG Investing

The financial media is drawn to catchphrases –acronyms and buzzwords that can be sold as the new thing. ‘FAANG’ (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) is the latest of these. But does this constitute an investment strategy?

Who said you can’t beat the market

Over the years, our firm has argued that it is

What happens if you miss the best 25 days of returns on the Australian Share Market?

At Alman Partners True Wealth we have always advocated our clients to be diversified and patient investors. In the example below, this portfolio is invested into the top 300 Australian shares be size. If you stayed invested for the full time you received an 8% annualised return. If you missed the best 25 days your return dropped to less than 1%.

Buy Blue Chips

Every night on the TV finance news, you’ll hear about the ups and downs of household name stocks, like the big four banks, Telstra, CSL, Wesfarmers, Woolworths, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. But the market is more than that handful of names.

How do you break a bad investment habit?

Bad investment habits are the norm, not the exception. They include panicking and bailing out at generational market lows, like what too many did in 2009. Conversely, the same people often buy aggressively into market bubbles, like the technology debacle at the turn of this century.

Often these behaviours are the result of conditioned responses. We can have both good and bad investment habits. The key takeaway is understanding how they are created.

In his excellent book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explains why we continue to do self-destructive things. According to Duhigg, there are three components to forming a habit: cue, routine and reward.