Equity Mates Investing Podcast

Short selling is the act of betting on the price of an asset to go down. It is very topical in Australia at the moment, with the controversy over short-seller J Capital Research releasing a report about software-company WiseTech Global (ASX: WTC). WiseTech is a market darling in Australia, up over 100% year-to-date, but fell 25% after J Capital released their report. Given short-selling is topical...

You've heard it before - 'knowledge is power' - and when it comes to investing, improving your knowledge can be achieved by reading, and reading, and reading. Almost every expert investor we have interviewed has said the best thing you can do to improve your performance is to read and read widely. We've previously spoken about the traditional places we go to find information - books, the major new...

One of the unique things about the stock market is that you are told the price of your asset every single day. Imagine if that was the same in other asset classes. Every day, a real estate agent calls you to tell you the value of your house or an online portal shows you the latest price someone got for your car. This price tag is the 'market cap' (which when it gets divided by the number of shares...

In this episode we continue the conversation about exchange traded funds. This time, we sat down with Balaji Gopal, who is the Head of Product Strategy at Vanguard Australia. Vanguard has AUD $8 trillion under management, and is one of the largest ETF providers in the world. In this episode, you will learn: • What the most challenging aspect of Balaji's role is • The what makes Vanguard's operatin...

WeWork has been front of mind over the past few weeks. The office space leasing company funded by Softbank's Vision Fund had expected a $47 billion value at IPO. Instead, the company had to pull its IPO as its expected value dropped to below $20 billion. Days later, the company dismissed the co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann. After pulling the IPO, questions have now arisen about WeWork's ability to...

A while ago (and in response to our most common critique) we at Equity Mates made a commitment - to improve the quality of our audio. Unfortunately, Ren is moving house at the moment and with a poor internet connection comes patchy audio. So in the spirit of upholding our commitment, and improving our audio quality, we chose not to release that episode. Instead, we're re-releasing one of our favou...

The Pharmaceutical industry would have to be one of the most unique and globalised industries you can invest in. Be it the patent system that protects products for up to 20 years, the vast sums of money needed for research and development or the stigma that often surrounds the industry, it certainly is a fascinating area to look for opportunities to invest. We continue with our Industry Deep Dive...

It's with great excitement that we've been able to return to our Mates of Equity Mates series, with a special on bonds. This one is a little different to the last, with Kip. In this episode, we sit down with a good mate from university, Knes, who is now heavily involved in the bonds industry. Bonds has been an asset we've wanted to explore a little deeper, so this was the perfect opportunity. Knes...

We've gathered all the questions that have come in over the last month from the Equity Mates Community, pulled out some of the good ones, and answered them in this episode. How to ask us a question: • Ask Us Anything Page • Facebook Discussion Group In this episode, we address questions around: • What happened to book club • What are some of the best episodes to start with to find a good company •...

As always, we are excited about this episode, as we get the chance to sit down with Julia Lee to pitch specific stocks! How does it work? Each month, Ren (Alec) & Bryce will come together with Julia Lee, to each pitch a stock we think is either interesting, be it due to its business model, its opportunity for growth or perhaps its management, or that we think presents a good investment opportu...

Tax time. Hopefully, a time of year you receive a nice return from the government. The question is, what should you do with your tax return? Treat yourself? Pay down debts? Invest the whole lot? There are a lot of things you can do with your tax return - some, perhaps, more fruitful than others. In this episode, we talk about what we have done with our tax returns, and then we check in with three...

Agriculture. An enormous industry in Australia on many levels, from the vast land-use, contribution to export dollars and contribution to Australian Gross Domestic Product. Australia is lucky to be strategically placed in the Asia-Pacific to capitalise on the growing population of the Asian region, and as such, the growing demand for our agricultural products. You'd think it'd be a no-brainer-inve...

If you're new to the show - welcome. You've chosen a great episode to start you journey with Equity Mates. This episode is a cracker. We had a great conversation with the Co-Founder and Head of Strategy and Marketing at BetaShares, Ilan Israelstam. The ETF market continues to grow at pace, and the options between theme-specific and broad-market ETFs are starting to become endless for investors. Be...

There is a big, wide world of opportunity out there, and one of the biggest mistakes investors can make is to not explore it. This mistake, when an investor only invests in their home market, is known as 'home country bias'. Think about it this way - Australia is 2% of the total value of the global share market. So if you only invest in Australia, you're missing out on the other 98% of the possibl...

We love investing in companies at Equity Mates, and normally this is done through the public markets and stock exchanges. However, there is a whole other world of private markets that retail investors, like us, rarely get access to. It's in these markets, for example, that you get to invest in innovative, early-stage companies before they potentially exit with IPO. The good news is that there are...

We've gathered all the questions that have come in over the last month from the Equity Mates Community, pulled out some of the good ones, and answered them over this 2 part series (there were too many good ones to limit it to just one episode!) How to ask us a question: • Ask Us Anything Page • Facebook Discussion Group In this episode, we address questions around: • Where we go for investing info...

We've gathered all the questions that have come in over the last month from the Equity Mates Community, pulled out some of the good ones, and answered them over this 2 part series (there were too many good ones to limit it to just one episode!) How to ask us a question: • Ask Us Anything Page • Facebook Discussion Group In this episode, we address questions around: • Is $500 enough to start invest...

Cash flow and profit - both are important elements of a healthy, growing business. But don't get them confused as being the same thing. One of the biggest reasons that many businesses and entrepreneurs go out of business, is because they don't manage their cash flow. Just because a business is profitable, doesn't mean it's got sufficient cash flow to sustain itself. Understanding the difference be...

On August 12th, 2019, Argentina's S&P Merval Index (the most important index of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange), plummeted 48% - the second-largest single-day drop of any stock market since 1950. The Argentine peso also fell 15%. So the question is, why? Investors were spooked by the result of a primary election, and with the economy already struggling, and debt mounting, it increased fears f...

Mastermind has quickly become one of the most popular mini-series of Equity Mates. And for good reason. We love sitting down with Julia Lee to pitch a stock or trade idea to each. It's with great excitement that we bring you the 3rd episode in the series! How does it work? Each month, Ren (Alec) & Bryce will come together with Julia Lee, to each pitch a stock we think is either interesting, be...

Earnings season - that time of the year when public companies report their half year or full year financial results. We're about halfway through the season at the moment and we've seen some very noteworthy reports so far. The most important thing to keep in mind when companies report - don't get too caught up in the expectations game. Analysts will have expectations and the share price will move b...

The Australian stock market makes up approx. 3% of the global stock market. Even the US stock market is just over 50% of the global stock market. As such, its important to avoid 'home country bias' and expand your investing universe to take advantage of opportunity around the world. Especially today with technology making it easier than ever before to access global markets. The first thing every i...

There's been plenty happening in markets recently, and even with 2 episodes a week we haven't had a chance to discuss it all. So in this episode we catch up on a few topics we've had our eye on. This includes changes in our personal investing journeys, new products for investors we're trying and big changes in the world of finance. In this episode we discuss: • The recent performance of the price...

Unless you've been in a submarine, blocked off from worldly communication, it would be pretty fair to assume you've heard a lot about central banks and interest rates in the media. Particularly over the past couple of years. We're going through a period that is arguably quite unprecedented, and the role of the central bank is coming into question - do they have the influence they once had? In this...

The first thing you need to understand about ethical investing - it's a myth that you're sacrificing returns for morality. In fact, over the last 12 months (so including 2018's horrific end of the year) the ASX200 is up 8% and the S&P500 is up 3%. In comparison, Betashare's Global Ethical ETF (ASX: ETHI) is up 12% and their Australian Ethical ETF (ASX: FAIR) is up 15%. So it seems that good mo...