Medical marijuana has been given the green light by the government, and what seems like, investors too. In the past few months, it has been legal in Australia to cultivate, manufacture and import medicinal cannabis and many people are trying to cash in on the crop. This has seen money pouring in with eye watering results. The most recent and notorious example is a company called Stem Cell United [ASX:SCU], a $3million company specializing in Chinese medicine plant extraction. Earlier in March, this stock was trading at 1 cent per share. In intraday trading on 15th March, it hit $1.08.
According to a recent study, recruiters spend an average of 6 seconds reviewing an individual resume. As an applicant, it’s incredibly important to make those few seconds count. Scanning becomes increasingly difficult if a resume is hard to read, poorly organised or exceeds 1-2 pages
When analysing investments, there’s no such thing as too much research. The more informed investors are around the company at hand including key industry and company specific performance drivers, operating segments and economic factors (just to name a few important areas), the more likely it is the decision to invest or not will be accretive to the portfolio. In this blog post, I’ll go through a few of the more common research tools and their pros and cons.
Donald Trump’s surprise win in the 2016 US election has sent shockwaves through the markets, newspapers, and the whole world. The mainstream media, the global markets, and pretty much the entire world backed a Clinton victory. As always though, there are people who make bets against the market and against the odds. This time round, that was my friend (also named James) and I.
The Australian dairy industry has been in the spotlight this year after the farm gate milk price was slashed. The problem with the dairy industry is that products being produced have a continuous flow with no way of turning off the tap. Milk flow is crucial in the dairy industry and cows are milked twice a day, however, companies can only hold the milk in the short term. The flow of milk for the most part is fed into multinational or internationally owned companies. Most farms that supply milk to major companies are generational farmers with generation infrastructure, hence why any slight changes to the farm gate price of milk will cause not just a ripple within the industry, but rather a tidal wave.
I’m not sure about everybody else, but my first introduction to investment and the ASX was via the banking industry. The big four holding an Oligopoly in the financial markets and the promise of reasonably high dividends was often enough for me throw my hard earned pocket money at them. (There have been a lot of “shut up and take my money” moments in the past when that blue line on my screen moved below a certain point).
Ahhh “Negative Gearing”, buzz words you’ve probably been glad to hear less of since the commotion surrounding the federal election has finally died down. Believe it or not, these are the two words that have recently been thrown around more than the role of Prime Minister in this country – shocking, I know. So you may ask, what is Negative Gearing? Well, simply put Negative Gearing is a practice that allows investors in property to reduce their tax paid on other income, if the interest repayments on their property loan exceed the rental income received from the property (i.e. they make a capital loss). This allows property investors to realise gains if the capital appreciation of the property is greater than the capital loss from interest repayments.
Amid record revenue figures by Qantas, are tourism profits starting to take off? Newspaper headlines have stated that the Australian dollar is overvalued at current levels and therefore, on a purely theoretical perspective, it would be rational to assume tourism will greatly benefit. However, what makes sense in theory does not always eventuate. While it might appear that the tourism sector largely depends on macroeconomic trends such as; the exchange rate, technological changes and global economic growth, there is much more to this relatively volatile sector.
