Author: Law Linc

April 17, 2026

October Update – Week 1

The last 3 months of 2020 begin. Six cases in Victoria. Case numbers need to trend down for further restrictions to be relaxed.

Our portfolio took a decent dip this week on the back of a probable company milestone being delayed. We are a touch under $200,000 market value as of today.

Watchlist and company updates for members are at the end of this post.

The market has continued its sideways trend this month, just breakng over 6000 points after 4 weeks or so.

Trump’s tweets sent the markets into meltdowns and rallies. He also grabbed headlines with his quick entry and exit from the hospital due to contracting COVID. Twitter posted misinformation warnings on Trump tweets overnight as he compared the coronavirus to the flu. He is back in the White House. Democrats are expected to use the mishandling of the pandemic as leverage running into the election.

Locally, the most recent budget was revealed. A good rundown is available on the Guardian. For members, we highlight our take on the impacts to sectors and our portfolio companies below.

On to the latest CEO insights.

CEO Insights

Australian Economy

“Australian CEOs do seem a little more optimistic than their global counterparts” 

“In general, bigger businesses have weathered this OK, I think it’s smaller businesses who are struggling and have been hit harder than bigger business. The fact we’ve had less insolvencies than 12 months ago doesn’t seem right…there will be a time of reckoning, it’s a question of whether the government can somehow smooth that to assist as many as possible to the other side”

Gary Wingrove, CEO, KPMG Australia

Education

“We expect digital education programs to be an essential part of classroom instruction long after the pandemic is behind us” 

Dick Robinson, CEO, Scholastic Corporation

Technology

“Smartphone, auto, and consumer end markets have started to recover, and we see further demand improvements ahead” 

Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO, Micron Technology [global manufacturer of computer memory/storage]

“We’ve always maintained that there’s room for multiple technologies here [Australia]. They’ll suit different customers at different stages in their life cycles, or based on their situation” 

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, CEO, Optus

Manufacturing

“We are confident measures like this [the $1.5bn manufacturing sector stimulus] will ensure Australian manufacturing will become an enticing investment for the private sector” 

Robert Giles, CEO, SPC Foods

“Australia should focus resources on sectors where we are strong or have a natural advantage. Australia is too small to be everything to everyone. Other similar sized countries have realised this and also focus investment on specific sectors” 

Dig Howitt, CEO, Cochlear Ltd

Retail

“COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of sustainability. Demand for good value, sustainable products is expected to grow in the wake of the pandemic” 

“Well, for the industry as a whole, speed and flexibility will just become more and more important”

Helena Helmersson, CEO, H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB

“As people are spending less on travel, air and hotel and dining out, they seem to have redirected some of those dollars to categories like lawn and garden, furniture and mattresses, exercise equipment, bicycles, housewares, cookware, plastics and the like” 

Richard Galanti, CFO, CostCo Wholesale Corporation

Automotive

For the rest of the year I would say our base case is still to be back roughly at where we were last year” 

Hakan Samuelsson, CEO, Volvo Cars Corporation AB

Energy & Resources

“At the moment, gas prices are low, but that’s because of COVID. They won’t stay low…eventually they will go up. This [the new Narrabri gas project] will stop them from going back up to ridiculous levels” 

Garbis Simonian, CEO, Weston Energy [energy retailer]

Aviation

“I can only speak from AirAsia’s perspective, I think business travel, intercontinental travel, first-class travel is going to take longer to rebound. But short-haul travel has been proven already with our domestic routes like in Thailand and Malaysia, we are at about 70 per cent load capacity” 

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, CEO, AirAsia

“I think [going into administration] has provided a huge opportunity for us to reset and to emerge with a much stronger balance sheet and a much lower cost base, which is what we’re going to need going into what will be a fairly competitive market in the early days” 

Paul Scurrah, CEO, Virgin Australia

Travel & Leisure

“You may potentially see some mergers and acquisitions take place, as we’ve seen after the financial crisis but I don’t think it’s immediate though, as there’s a lot of government support around the world” 

Keith Barr, CEO, InterContinental Hotels Group plc

“When the whole industry’s losing money month-to-month and nearly all of that industry must have international travel to survive, clearly there has to be some consolidation” 

Jamie Pherous, CEO, Corporate Travel Management Ltd

“Demand for international travel will not fully recover before FY23 or FY24 in the absence of an effective vaccine” 

Graham Turner, CEO, Flight Centre Travel Group Ltd

Healthcare

“There is an enormous backlog of work” 

Peter Freeleagus, CEO, Cura Day Hospitals [nationwide private day hospital company]

Food & Beverage

“Home cooking has really become a trend that’s becoming a habit” 

Lawrence Kurzius, CEO, McCormick & Company Foods [world’s largest manufacturer of spices, seasonings]

“I think it’s going to be a much more flexible environment and much more tech-enabled remote kind of work, where consumers will be at home a few days of the week. And that will drive, I think, a different behaviour in terms of breakfast consumption and potentially some of the other meals during the day, especially lunch. So that’s how we’re thinking about the long-term category growth” 

Ramon Laguarta, CEO, PepsiCo Inc

Property

“We have no people coming [into Australia]…we don’t have people to buy. We have a big demand for leasing, I lease 200 apartments a week, because those people don’t have the money to buy” 

Harry Triguboff, CEO, Meriton

Members only updates follow below.

Short-term trading, the harsh truth revealed

There is a comprehensive article on Tradeciety that lists statistics from numerous studies and surveys about short term trading.

The article concludes:

After going over these 24 statistics it’s very obvious to tell why traders fail. More often than not trading decisions are not based on sound research or tested trading methods, but on emotions, the need for entertainment and the hope to make a million dollars in your underwear. 

Rolf, Tradeciety

The stats that we found most relevant were these:

  1. 80% of all day traders quit within the first two years. 

  2. Nearly 40% day trade for only one month before quitting. Within three years, only 13% continue to day trade. After five years, only 7% remain.

  3. The average solo investor underperforms a market index by 1.5% per year. Active traders underperform by 6.5% annually.

  4. Day traders with strong past performance go on to earn strong returns in the future. Though only about 1% of all day traders are able to predictably profit after fees.

  5. Traders with up to a 10 years negative track record continue to trade. This suggests that day traders continue to trade even when they receive a negative signal regarding their ability.

  6. Profitable day traders make up a small proportion of all traders – 1.6% in the average year.

  7. Traders tend to sell winning investments while holding on to their losing investments. 

  8. Men trade more than women. And unmarried men trade more than married men.

  9. Poor, young men, who live in urban areas and belong to specific minority groups invest more in stocks with lottery-type features.

  10. Traders are more likely to repurchase a stock that they previously sold for a profit than one previously sold for a loss.

  11. Traders don’t learn about trading. “Trading to learn” is no more rational or profitable than playing roulette to learn for the individual investor.

  12. The average day trader loses money by a considerable margin after adjusting for transaction costs.

  13. Traders are overweight in stocks from the industry in which they are employed.

  14. Traders with a high-IQ tend to hold more mutual funds and larger number of stocks. Therefore, benefit more from diversification effects.

The above statistics were sourced from American and Asian demographics.

Australian statistics are similar

We wanted to see something more specific to Australia, and spent some time doing a review of existing material on short term traders vs long term investors.

In general, the data shows that the average short-term trader in Australia underperformed the average investor by 6% per year.

A few years ago, that didn’t matter too much, as the Australian sharemarket had a long-term compound return of 12.5% per annum and retail investors / traders were averaging around 8% per annum. Institutions and corporate investors also used to outperform the index back then.

Currently, over 80% of active funds have not been able to beat the ASX 200 index in the last 5 years. We wrote about The three reasons Tabarruk beats the market, funds and short term trading in some detail too.

The trader’s delusion

Most traders I try and engage with about this, often remember their best trades and ‘forget’ their bad ones or don’t want to talk about those.

Most were also perfectly happy if they could generate 8% net return per annum. Even when I show them that by investing in an index fund that tracks the ASX 200 index, with next to no effort, they could’ve had a 12.5% return over the same period.

It didn’t matter to them that their trading costs, (plus other short term costs) and higher tax from selling shares in under 12 months, were higher. And that they underperformed a passive investment strategy.

They seem to have this delusion of doing very well, and proudly talk up their biggest wins, and underplaying or avoiding their losses.

I would push a bit at times and they admitted the losses they made in the past on stocks which had gone bust and they lost the lot – but these were no longer part of their current investment portfolio, so they tended to underestimate the cost of the duds.

I have a friend who is a professional investor / colleague from a past life. Anyway this friend tried short term trading with the shares of a company we hold at Tabarruk. It’s one of our major holdings and has done 300% in growth as of August 2020, with the upside potential some orders of magnitudes if the company continues on it’s current path.

Anyway, my friend bought and sold this company multiple times this year, holding a parcel throughout in his “investment portfolio” and chopping in and out with the rest, for small gains and losses in his “trading portfolio”.

When we compared our initial investments in this company, trading fees (brokerage) and our current net returns / growth, my growth was about a 100% more than his. His parcel that he initially bought and held outperformed his trading parcel by 200%.

This stark difference in numbers on the screens had him drop his jaw on the floor, followed by ‘And I spent hours watching the charts and trading this, which I will never get back’. I couldn’t resist a cooking analogy to drive my point home. Cooking a perfect steak means you don’t keep turning it!

Statistics generally show that well over 50% (and as high as 90%) of traders lose their money or significantly underperform, therefore we don’t try to beat those odds and we prefer invest long term with the Tabarruk Framework and Screening Process™. We do use pricing opportunities (often with alerts set in our broker platforms) to time our entry points.

Short-term trading is fraught with danger and often turns out to appear fairly random. For us, it is far easier to identify companies which are a long way below long term value and buy and hold them until they realise the inherent value, or until we can find something else with greater potential upside.

Misunderstanding between traders and investors

There is a basic problem here with short-term traders butting heads with long-term investors.

Some of the traders get up the noses of investors by implying they are smarties who are making profits on every twist and turn (highly unlikely when you consider the overall stats on trading) and some are trying to manipulate the situation by throwing around worrying comments, or by manipulating share prices directly.

Some of the investors seem to want the price to rise continually without any corrections and are worried that the traders will force an unjustified price fall.

We all know a continuous rise isn’t going to happen – and even if there are no traders out there, some get nervous and sell to “lock in profits” and some need to sell to fund their lifestyle – pushing the price down temporarily, even if it is worth much more in the future.

This arguing and misunderstanding has the aspects of culture wars – you’ll never convince the other side, so it’s better to work out your own investment philosophy and stick to it – don’t let others panic you into doing something against your own strategy and financial circumstances.

There’s no point people arguing with diametrically opposed points of view between trading and investing – you’ll never convince each other and it becomes philosophical and sometimes hysterical, with science and statistics ignored in favour of one-off “proofs” by someone who has a short term win concluding that just because they ‘won’ a short-term trade, they were right – very poor science, more arguing by anecdote and selective correlation.

Unsubstantiated comments like “the price has risen too fast” or “the market cap is unsustainably high” or “Company X will have to raise more money” can shock and unnerve investors – but there’s often no underlying science to them.

Our experience also shows the greatest potential upside in a share is the first decile of the price cycle when the the price starts to rise from an oversold “near death experience” i.e. when the price is ridiculously cheap but nobody has the guts to buy it and the last panic seller has just finished selling; and the second greatest potential is the tenth decile of the price cycle when everyone is piling in to a sure thing and pushing the price way above what I think it is worth – so don’t sell out too early!

And as always, this is not financial advice. Read our disclaimer.

September Update – Fortnight 2

The September milestones continue. Both of us have had a few virtual high fives over zoom.

Our portfolio broke the $200,000 market value barrier one week after we crossed a net investment of $100,000 since we started the current portfolio in March 2020.

Purchase entry and update for members are at the end of this post.

The market has continued its sideways trend this month, albeit staying under 6000 points. A few corrections were triggered by volatility in the US and global markets, due to elections, second COVID wave concerns etc.

The other market recovery phenomenon we’re watching play out is a ‘K’ shaped recovery.

As an example look at the ASX 200 indexes for all tech companies vs financial sector since Feb 2020.

Some sectors have recovered, while others haven’t and may not for a while yet.

The difference in sectors that have recovered and those that haven’t, form a ‘K’ shape.

Similar comparisons can be made with sectors that haven’t recovered yet vs those that have, i.e. healthcare, mining etc.

The key to our success has been picking the right companies in the right sectors regularly as we see them, which will continue to be our plan.

On to the latest CEO insights.

CEO Insights

Technology

“What you’re also seeing in this economy is that the CEOs and the business line executives have realised that technology is the most important enabler for their business” 

Michael Dell, CEO, Dell Technologies

“Today the internet connects billions of people to giant cloud data centres. In the future, trillions of devices will be connected to millions of data centres, creating a new internet of things [IOT] that is thousands of times bigger than today’s internet of people”

Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA Corp [multinational graphics chip manufacturer]

Advertising & Marketing

“I would say that, if you look at the big tech companies, they’re all about now getting into media. If you look at the media companies, they’re trying to use new technologies like streaming and other platforms to distribute their content” 

Brian Roberts, CEO, Comcast Corporation [telecommunications & media conglomerate]

Retail

“Pre-COVID, we projected that the US domestic market would hit 100 million packages per day by calendar year 2026. We now project that the US domestic parcel market will hit this mark by calendar year 2023, pulling volume projections forward by three years from the previous expectations. E-commerce fuelled substantially by this pandemic is driving the extraordinary growth” 

Brie Carere, Chief Marketing Officer, FedEx Corporation

“A lot of the supplier shortages [of inventory] were predominantly around retailers believing their business was going to be severely impacted negatively by COVID and, taking out Victoria, that’s not what they saw. What we saw in fact was that business went through the roof in certain categories” 

Paul Zahra, CEO, Australian Retailers Association

Automotive

“As this pandemic has rolled on people have been quite nervous to take public transport, and there has been an element of the public looking at used cars to maybe get a second car” 

James Voortman, CEO, Australian Automotive Dealers Association

Energy & Resources

“Looking forward, we see a lower carbon technology as being essential. If anything, the changes over the last few months have accelerated the drive towards better, cleaner power solutions. The world is demanding cleaner energy” 

Warren East, CEO, Rolls Royce Holdings Ltd

Transport & Logistics

“A key trend is the dramatic reduction of air cargo capacity as a result of the significant loss of commercial airline capacity. Current estimates indicate that freighter capacity now accounts for 66% of total air capacity on the Transatlantic lane; 83% on the Trans-Pacific; and 80% on the Europe to Asia lane. This compares to pre-COVID freighter capacity of 33% for Transatlantic; 59% for Trans-Pacific and 50% for Europe to Asia” 

Brie Carere, Chief Marketing Officer, FedEx Corporation

Travel & Leisure

“One of the things that has clearly emerged is that there is more of a blending between business and leisure. So, whatever the phrase, I have heard “Bleisure”, knowing exactly what the bookings are, business or leisure, when they go from a Wednesday through a Sunday, is harder to define which that is” 

“I do think there’s some real pent-up demand across all the segments of our business, and while that may not be sustainable forever, I do personally believe that there’s going to be a really nice spike in demand once everybody feels comfortable with traveling”

Leeny Oberg, CFO, Marriott International Inc

“Our view is demand is not coming back. People are not going to get back and travel like they did before until there’s a vaccine that’s been widely distributed and available to a large portion of the population” 

Scott Kirby, CEO, United Airlines Inc

“It’s not going to be nearly the relatively fast recovery as we’d all hoped back in July when borders began to open. We’re definitely looking at four to five years at least until we really come out of this” 

James Kavanagh, Managing Director Australia, Flight Centre Travel Group Ltd

Workforce & Employment

“I think the biggest take away from all the CEOs I talked to, that really to a CEO [they are] very worried about employee engagement right now” 

Aneel Bhusri, CEO, Workday Inc [HR & finance global software company]

Payments & Banking

“What you would typically see in a recession is the savings rate fall. We’re actually seeing the savings rate increase and that’s because, we’ve seen spending go down, but we’ve seen discretionary income be flat or up in some cases” 

Jen Piepszak, CFO, JP Morgan & Chase Co

“If more digital transactions are to be kept safe, more digital transactions also means more data that’s associated with those transactions is available, so we see a trend for more demand for data analytics and for cybersecurity solutions” 

Michael Miebach, CEO, Mastercard Inc

“We’ve all seen a general trend in payments towards this concept of buying now and paying later and, for us, this [creating a BNPL product] is very much a way to capture additional share of checkout. This is something that helps drive additional sales for merchants. You tend to see the average order value be larger, and it creates more customer loyalty as well” 

John Rainey, CFO, PayPal Holdings Inc

Commercial Property

“It’s going to be a couple of years to see the full impact on the market. We are going to have weak office demand and we’ve been very upfront about it” 

Darren Steinberg, CEO, Dexus.

“Our view is that the hub-and-spoke model will be about flexibility, so if you are going to ‘spoke’ you’ll do it from home. Hubs are expensive to operate. In fact, in a recession, people are going to be very dollar conscious and so why would they disband a major head office, where they get great economies of scale, and instead open up all of these hubs?” 

Darren Steinberg, CEO, Dexus.

Residential Property

“I do think we are seeing a change in the social fabric. I expect property prices in regional centres to grow and grow strongly. A million bucks doesn’t buy you much in Sydney and Melbourne” 

Steve Laidlaw, CEO, People’s Choice Credit Union [one of Australia’s largest credit unions]

Members only updates follow below with purchase entries and company updates.

September Update – Fortnight 1

We’re proud to hit a significant milestone this month: We have invested over $100,000 since March 2020.

As of today, the return is a stellar growth of over 88% to bring the folio value to $195,000.

Best way to depict this visually is a chart comparing the Australian market vs Tabarruk’s folio.

We beat the market comfortably and continue to widen the gap gradually despite the market being in a flat, sideways pattern.

We’re confident in continuing our growth as the market and sectors we invest in recover over the long term.

The 3 keys to our strategy have been;

  1. Buying quality companies regularly (at least once a month)
  2. Averaging down the ones that trend down
  3. Holding them patiently despite volatility

Purchase entries and watchlist updates for members are at the end of this update.

A round up of what Management in key sectors are saying around the world follows.

CEO Insights

Australian Economy

“We feel that we are very much in the early stages of COVID-19 and its impact on the economy. The longer-term implications…are really yet to play out” 

Rob Scott, CEO, Wesfarmers Ltd

“It is clear that the recovery will take slightly longer and be more uneven than we thought a couple of moths ago, but there are some positive signs now emerging” 

Matt Comyn, CEO, Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd

“East Coast [Australian] infrastructure activity remains resilient, being a key lever for governments to accelerate economic activity” 

Market Announcement, Seven Group Holdings Ltd

“The technology industry is a fast-track to Australia’s post-pandemic recovery. It’s a massive force multiplier for jobs and already makes up 6 per cent of our GDP, a number which could be much higher. Doubling down on our investment in innovation now will reward our nation 10-fold into the future” 

Scott Farquhar, Co-CEO, Atlassian Inc

Global Economy

“In seeking to achieve inflation that averages 2% over time, we are [now] not tying ourselves to a particular mathematical formula that defines the average. Thus, our [new] approach could be viewed as a flexible form of average inflation targeting” 

Jerome Powell, Chairman, US Federal Reserve

“Based on what we’ve seen of our customers, as well as observing the whole market growth, the China market is going to be a much faster-growing market in cloud than the U.S. market” 

Jos Tsai, Co-Founder/Vice Chairman, Alibaba Group

“The [Chinese] government has stepped in with some stimulus that we expect is going to create further momentum through to next calendar year so things are looking pretty positive and pretty resilient [for iron ore]” 

Mike Henry, CEO, BHP Group Ltd

“As the benefits from stimulus waned towards the end of the quarter, we saw our comp sales [comparable same store sales] settle into a normal range” 

MarketDoug McMillon, CEO, Walmart Inc 

Technology

“Organisations have moved beyond addressing immediate business continuity needs to actively redefining and embracing new approaches to support a future of working anywhere, learning anywhere and connecting anywhere” 

Eric Yuan, CEO, Zoom Video Communications Inc

“Many of the security leaders we spoke with believe that experiencing a breach now, while their business is under extreme stress due to the impact of COVID, would be far more detrimental to their business versus last year” 

George Kurtz, CEO, CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc [multinational cybersecurity technology company]

“PCs have become essential. In the past, we were talking about one PC per home. Now we see the need to have one PC per person. This is going to be driving demand [and] it’s going to be staying with us for a while” 

Enrique Lores, CEO, HP Inc

“The economics now are demonstrating, and we have big customers who’ve shown this, that consistently [moving businesses systems to the cloud] is 30% cheaper than if it’s on-premise” 

EPatrick Gelsinger, CEO, VMWare Inc [NASDAQ listed major cloud computing company]

Advertising & Marketing

“Two things are happening; post-pandemic brand advertising – there’s been some reallocation back to brand – and a consciousness that actually various parts of the economy have performed reasonably well through the pandemic, particularly retail in many areas” 

Hugh Marks, CEO, Nine Entertainment Co

“The worst is behind us in terms of advertising budget cuts [by clients] … The pandemic has caused decades of innovation packed into about four months” 

Mark Read, CEO, WPP plc [world’s largest advertising agency]

Retail

“We still see an accelerated adoption of online shopping for all kinds of goods, including groceries” 

Fabian Siefel, CEO, Marley Spoon Ltd

“We still see there’s life in retail and life in shopping centres. In markets that have less impact from COVID we’re still trading strongly” 

Shane Fallscheer, CEO, Lovisa Holdings Ltd

“BigCommerce is participating in one of the largest and fastest transformations in human economic history, the global shift in commerce from offline to online. It took 23 years for e-commerce to go from non-existent to 10% of all global consumer spending in 2017. eMarketer [market research firm] predicts it will take just 6 years for this percentage to more than double to 21% of global retail spending in 2023” 

Brett Bellm, CEO, BigCommerce Holdings Inc [global ecommerce software platform]

“Affordable luxury is a key trend that we’ve seen in all recessions. Consumers want to pamper themselves, despite the difficulties they’re having” 

Noel Wallace, CEO, Colgate-Palmolive Company

“What we’ve seen in the last quarter is that spending in the household category has been very strong, including furniture, homewares, hardware and electrical. In my 26 years of large-format retail experience, I’ve never witnessed anything like this” 

Darren Holland, CEO Aventus Group

“While many people feel more comfortable shopping online than in stores, those that do venture out are much more intentional to make a purchase when they visit” 

Carlos Alberini, CEO, Guess Inc

Healthcare

“The public [hospital] sector doesn’t have the capacity to be able to deal with the backlog of elective surgery without support, so we are there to do that” 

Craig McNaly, CEO, Ramsay Healthcare Ltd

Energy & Resources

“Looking forward, we see a lower carbon technology as being essential. If anything, the changes over the last few months have accelerated the drive towards better, cleaner power solutions. The world is demanding cleaner energy” 

Warren East, CEO, Rolls Royce Holdings Ltd

Transport & Logistics

“Here we are in September and actually, we’ve almost recovered back to the levels we had in global container volumes compared with pre-COVID”

Jeremy Nixon, CEO, Ocean Network Express [global shipping container company]

Travel & Leisure

“We are running around a bit shy of 30 per cent of last year’s activity [for corporate bookings] and Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne is 45 per cent of last year’s” 

Jamie Pherous, CEO, Corporate Travel Management Ltd

“We expect our large engine flying hours to recover to 90% of the 2019 levels by 2022” 

Warren East, CEO, Rolls Royce Holdings Ltd

“I believe that travel experiences will be even more treasured when this has ended. People will not hesitate to go and see and do the things they have always wanted to do in the newfound knowledge that circumstances can change very rapidly” 

Andrew Burnes, CEO, Helloworld Travel Ltd

“We believe that the demand for out-of-home family entertainment experiences will be stronger than ever once the pandemic has subsided and restrictions have eased” 

Dr Gary Weiss, Chairman, Ardent Leisure Group

“Our biggest takeaway from capturing and analysing industry data was that e-sports is growing exponentially and traditional entertainment and sports organizations have taken notice of the successful esports model” 

Sam Matthews, CEO, Fnatic [global e-sports entertainment company]

Manufacturing

“More than ever, our industries require solutions that reduce costs, enhance productivity and deliver sustainable outcomes” 

Ryan Campbell, CFO, Deere & Company

Food & Beverage

“Extraordinary demand [was] caused by the pandemic, driven by a major shift in consumer behavior toward eating at home with a resurgence of cooking simple meals and increased snacking occasions”

“This [health shift due to COVID-19] window is so unique, we’ve got to make the most of it…We all knew there would be a pivot eventually back to healthier recipes, from a little more comfort-oriented initially” 

Alison WaMark Clouse, CEO, Campbell Soup Co

“This [COVID-19] is probably the biggest trial ever in the consumer goods industry and the big question is what is going to happen after the special circumstances the consumer is living in today is going to fade and go back to normal. We’re certainly very happy what we have seen so far” 

Dirk Put, CEO, Mondelez International [food & beverage conglomerate/owner of Cadbury]

Commercial Property

“The Sydney CBD [for example] is in decline in the last 4 weeks by 45% as all the offices are essentially shut. If you talk to most stores that are open, they’re trading about half the levels that they were, and that volume has moved to the suburbs and so we’re seeing growth in suburbs” 

Peter West, Managing Director Australia, Coca-Cola Amatil Ltd

“The retail rental market in Australia is not paused because of the pandemic — it is fundamentally changed for the future” 

Scott Evans, CEO, Mosaic Brands Ltd

Residential Property

“The more impacted part of the economy has tended to be lower-skilled workers, more casual workers and sadly more females, [the] more low-income cohort and therefore that’s disproportionately the renter population as opposed to the homeowner population” 

Shayne Elliot, CEO, ANZ Banking Group Ltd 

“The commercial leasing codes have unleashed a red tape octopus that has meant that by mid-August, only one in four dollars of rent relief provisioned by landlords has so far been provided to their tenants in finalised agreements” 

ShKen Morrison, CEO, Property Council of Australia

Automotive

“Semiconductors and software are really the future of cars. That’s the way to think about it. All of the intelligence — the whole bedrock of what’s in the car in terms of the user experience, the intelligence, the driving experience – that is all being, if you like, enabled by semiconductors and software these days” 

Vincent Roche, CEO, Analog Devices Inc [global semiconductor chip manufacturer]

“The scale of the supply shortages differs among brands and it differs among models, but many dealers are still reporting shortages and delays” 

James Voortman, CEO, Australian Automotive Dealer Association (AADA)

“The scale of the supply shortages differs among brands and it differs “Demand has stabilised. In China we saw a V-shaped recovery. That’s not the case in Europe and North America but we have rebounded from the freefall” 

Ola Källenius, CEO, Daimler AG [Mercedes-Benz parent company]

Agriculture

“Labour has been the biggest issue through COVID. A lot of the work is done by backpackers and there are normally about 170,000 backpackers around and currently there are about 70,000, so getting workers is going to be an issue” 

David Schwartz, CEO, Vitalharvest Trust [owner of Costa Group farmland assets]

Members only updates follow below with purchase entries and company updates.

Investing Psychology – Part 3: Holding – where the growth really happens

The key to being patient is not what it seems

From Part 1 – What the market really is to Part 2 – Share price movements we’re now taking a deep dive into to the growth of our investments.

One of the things most investors struggle with is patience; the ability to wait for years and watch their money grow as their shares increase in value. This is true, especially for new investors. Moin and I know this intimately and there are times even now when we lean on each other to resist it.

It may seem easier to be patient when your investment is doing well, but you’d be surprised that it’s not the case. Investors who’ve owned shares in a company for a few months and have watched the company / share price do well are also prone to the pressure of selling.

I know people who are almost addicted to keeping track of share prices. It wears them out. We did this early on too.

August Update – Week 4

Our portfolio has had a solid couple of weeks, consistently beating the market and holding between 78-83% growth overall.

COVID cases continue their decline and market is holding at the 6,100 level.

CEO Insights

Technology

“We believe that the future computer company is a data center-scale company. The computing unit is no longer a microprocessor or even a server or even a cluster. The computing unit is an entire data center now” 

Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA Corporation [global manufacturer of computer graphics cards]

“There is never going to be a time – I hope – in our lifetimes where change [for companies] is as cheap as it is now” 

Stewart Butterfield, CEO, Slack Inc

Payments & Lending

“I think what’s happened is the world has accelerated from physical to digital across almost every industry. Across every industry, we’re seeing this surge towards a digital-first strategy” 

Dan Schulman, CEO, PayPal Inc

“The blurring of lines between online and in-store sales channels, and the digitalisation of commerce [has] continued” 

Pieter der Does, CEO, Adyen NV [global payments processor]

Retail

“Consumers have discovered new shopping habits online that are enduring, and this is true of all ages” 

Fabrizio Freda, CEO, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc

Property

“In the developer [property] market, lower investor demand and COVID-19 impacts on immigration, resulted in the deferral of high-rise apartment projects” 

Jason Pellegrino, CEO, Domain Holdings Australia Ltd

Global Economy

“While the outlook for 2021 remains uncertain, within the scenarios that we consider, our base case has the world economy rebounding solidly during the year” 

Market Announcement, BHP Group Ltd

Domestic Economy

“Very clearly, the economy needs to create jobs at a faster rate than has happened … we have got to have conditions that support business investment” 

Dig Howitt, CEO, Cochlear Ltd

Energy & Resources

“Oil markets and refining margins have been impacted by several global events including the transition to low sulphur marine fuels, OPEC+ supply disagreements and reduced global demand for oil products as a result of COVID-19. These have all weighed on global refining margins with sector returns heavily impacted as a result and refineries around the world recording significant losses” 

Scott Wyatt, CEO, Viva Energy Group Ltd

Transport & Logistics

“You can’t go to concerts or clubs or pubs, or sporting events but you can stay at home and buy stuff for your house. People are spending on themselves directly, instead of spending on entertainment, so we actually have a very strong underpinning and it will probably be a goods led [economic] recovery for some time” 

Richard White, CEO, WiseTech Global Ltd

Travel & Leisure

“Our business for last month has been at or above last year’s levels from a gross booking value. It’s totally crazy…So it dropped by about 80% and I mean, you know, nobody knows that this is pent up demand or not, but no, we’re around last year’s levels all around the world” 

Brian Chesky, CEO, Airbnb Inc

“When travel gets to the point that it turns back on, all past experiences are it turns back on in a big way. I think there will be a huge pent-up demand” 

Kyle Gendreau, CEO, Samsonite International SA

Automotive

“We have observed a strong rebound in demand for vehicles across multiple international markets as countries have emerged from lockdown. People’s aversion to taking public transport [deemed unsafe due to COVID-19] have increased the propensity for car ownership” 

Cameron McIntyre, CEO, Carsales.com Ltd

Food & Beverage

“As the market leader in at-home offerings, we are ideally placed to capitalise on consumer preferences for strong brands during uncertain times and to benefit from the shift in consumer shopping behavior towards no sugar offerings and [no] energy drinks” 

Alison Watkins, MD, Coca-Cola Amatil Ltd

Entertainment

“The gaming industry, with all that’s happening around the world [COVID-19] and it’s really unfortunate but it’s made gaming the largest entertainment medium in the world. More than ever, people are spending time digitally, spending their time in video games” 

Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA Corporation [global manufacturer of computer graphics cards]

“The consumer market is now growing at a much faster pace than pre COVID-19 times. If we look at June and July sales, the market would have been 40-50% higher than last year’s June and July. We clearly see the market growing double digit in gaming. That will continue” 

Rahul Agarwal, CEO, Lenovo [global computer manufacturer]

Education

“Gaining an international education is a lifelong aspiration. Our research shows 74% of IDP students with current university offers are holding on to their study goals” 

Andrew Barkla, CEO, IDP Education Ltd

Members only updates follow below.

Investing Psychology – Part 2: Share price movements

So now that we have a handle on what ‘the market’ is from Part 1 of the series; Investing Psychology – Part 1: What ‘the market’ really is, let’s take a closer look at the machinations of price movements on the market. An important question to have answered first is;

Q: How is a share’s price determined and by whom?

A: The last transaction where a buyer’s price and a seller’s price was matched is the share price at that moment in time. You can see this in most broker systems as ‘Course of Sales’ or ‘Trades’ to see the last transaction that was executed for the company.

So the price is determined by ‘us’ and executed by the broker system connected to the ASX (Australian Securities Exchange).

Course of Sales example

I didn’t know this myself and until it just clicked into place after a year of investing.

Money Habits – Part 1: Switch on the flashlight

This is a 5 part series that I’ve been thinking about for a while.

A conversation I have often with people looking to invest is how much to start with. While we think starting with 500 or 5,000 can lead to equally powerful results, the fact is, many people don’t know how much they can start with.

Or more to the point, they don’t know how much money they can afford to start with, because they don’t know how much they save.

You can’t know what you don’t measure. Data is key and it’s often in the dark.

Money Habit 1: Switch on the flashlight

Shine it on your money. Money coming in. Money going out.

Look at it and track it. Do it alone. Or with a friend. Or with your partner. Whatever works for you and you feel comfortable with.

Know what every single dollar in your account does. In other words, you need to track your money. Answer the following questions honestly:

What percentage of your income did you spend on living expenses, entertainment and investment last month?

Don’t deflect it as “Why is that important?” or “It doesn’t matter” if you don’t know.

You can be an executive sitting behind the desk in a bank, or even a high-flying project manager.

Truth is more money doesn’t make you more financially responsible, it just makes it easier to spend.

A survey in Australia found the following:

  • Almost one-third (30 per cent) of Australians don’t set a budget
  • Just under a quarter (24 per cent) aren’t saving any money at all
  • Almost one in five (18 per cent) are living pay cheque to pay cheque

That’s almost ¾ of Australian citizens, one step from falling off a financial cliff.

Then COVID happened.

The rich and financially successful people say, the road to financial success is to start with one simple step.

Budget and track your expenses.

The way my father thought me to budget my money was to follow 2 simple steps.

Step 1: Percentages to goals

Based on what you’re striving for (e.g. buying a house, saving for your children’s education, getting married etc.) start with your total income and break it into percentages for different aspects of your life, with your big picture goals in mind.

As an example, I split it as follows many years ago, into 4 chunks.

  1. 50% goes towards your living expenses (includes mortgage/rent)
  2. 10% goes to entertainment
  3. 30% goes into shares
  4. 10% goes into a rainy-day account, that has no card linked to it     

Step 2: Divide and conquer

The second step is to execute on the chunks you made by diligently tracking and funnelling money into these chunks.

The more detailed you can be, the better it is.

With internet banking and almost no cost or limit to how many bank accounts you can have, make an account for each chunk.

Here’s my current split of bank accounts as an example. This sets a clear delineation of your money and what role it serves you.

Growing wealth starts with knowing where you’re starting from. Whatever your motivation is, for a lot of us, there’s an aspect of wanting to make a difference. To our lives, to those of others. To help those with less. It’s a big part of why we created Tabarruk and decided to give 10% of our revenue to charity.

For us it’s extremely important because the main reason injustice and oppression occurs today is that money talks and those with good intentions usually have shallow pockets.

As a result, the possibility to make meaningful change is limited.

Some may say, we live in the age of social media and everything is interconnected. While this may be true to some extent, everyone has bills to pay and no matter how true a cause, the need to keep a roof over their heads will have most people return from the streets to a cubicle in an office (or your desk at home) working some kind of 9 to 5 job.

If you want to make a change, influence society in a meaningful way, remember that change starts with us and by apply the financial habits of the rich and powerful to better our lives, we can start on the path to financial freedom.

Stay tuned for the next part.

Investing Psychology – Part 1: What ‘the market’ really is

The way we think and behave, the core of who we are, and our level of self-awareness with regards to our emotions, all have a direct and significant impact on our results as investors.

The psychology of investing is something which has been written about in books and articles. ‘Fear and Greed’ are concepts that are tossed around as clichés and are obvious drivers of sentiment in the share market.

The emotions an investor experiences are more complex than fear and greed. The challenge is measuring the interplay between these emotions and the success attributed to one’s psychology.

In the first part of this series, I set the context around what ‘the market’ really is and also some insights that both Fahd and I have learned.

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