Tuesday 7th March 2023

The RBA again hiked interest rates 0.25% for the 10th month in a row. The cash rate is now at 3.6%.

 

Sunday 12th March 2023

A bank in the US called SVB (Silicon Valley bank) has come undone. This is a large bank that holds deposits for a huge number of startups. Turns out the depositors have lost access to the money via a run on the bank. 

Listen to this episode of the All In podcast for the details:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEee7dAk25c  

Fortunately this happened on a Friday so SVB stock price got hammered but it leaves the weekend to source a solution. If a solution isn’t found don’t be surprised to see a run on other regional banks. 

What does this mean for me? Not much. I can’t control or influence any of it so while I’m aware of this and other US banks under stress, I accept it’s all part and parcel of business, investing and life. 

 

Wednesday 15th March 2023

Financial author Morgan Housel has started his own podcast. I’m a fan of his fantastic book The Psychology of Money and his blog posts on the Collaborative Fund website.

The single biggest lesson I’ve got from his content is human behaviour does not change. It never has and it never will. To be fair Charlie Munger has also had a similar impact on me in terms of ‘show me the incentives and I’ll show you the behaviour. I feel knowing this is a huge advantage in life from the most simple situations to more complex ones.

 

Wednesday 22 March 2023

The Sigman sent me this Tweet from David Senra of the Founders Podcast. David recently spent 3 hrs with investor Charlie Munger. Here’s the meat and potato of his experience with Charlie. 

At 99 he is still *ferociously* intelligent. 

The most important lesson I learned from him that night was: GO FOR GREAT. 

In typical Charlie fashion it is a combination of 4 simple ideas:

1. Charlie looks at everything through the lens of history. Human nature does not change. The same behaviours repeat forever. 

2. Problems from time to time should  be expected. This is an inescapable part of life. 

3. Wise people do not whine about problems. They prevent them: 

"Wisdom is prevention." —Charlie Munger 

4. Great businesses are rare. Great people are rare too. Great people and great businesses produce fewer problems. 

Your mission in life is to get into a great business (and stay there)

and build relationships with great people. 

Doing that will prevent the majority of problems that are under your control. 

Go for great.

 

Thursday 23 March 2023

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case it’s four graphs. Go to the link and check them out. Time well spent. 

Four all-time best charts for every adviser and investor:

https://www.firstlinks.com.au/four-time-best-tables-every-adviser-investor 

 

Friday 24th March 2023

The FED in the US raised interest rates another 0.25% overnight. There’s a lot of noise as there always is around financial markets in terms of interest rates, inflation, bank runs, US commercial property vacancy and the like. 

You’ve got to be careful how much focus you give it, because the reality is we individually cannot control it. Plus, I question how much and how accurate the information we get is - outside factual things like interest rate movements. Wall Street and investment houses are incentivised to separate me from my money via continually producing fear based news of impending doom, crashes and crisis. 

We know with 100% certainty problems from time to time should  be expected. This is an inescapable part of life. Charlie Munger just reminded us minutes ago.      

 

Monday 27th March 2023

That FED balance sheet chart in my documents showing 2/3rd of the QT from last year has been reversed in just two weeks. That's to QE for the banking system in the US…  

I'm probably going to sound like a Morgan Housel fan boy. His latest article titled ‘All together Now’ is so good, I’m going to read it.  

https://collabfund.com/blog/all-together-now/ 

 

Wednesday 29th March 2023

Australian inflation dropped to 6.8% last month. So the rate of inflation has dropped however inflation itself seems fairly ‘baked in’ to the economy at this stage. Time will tell. 

 

Thursday 30th March 2023

VAS announced its distribution for the March quarter. It’s way down from the corresponding quarter last year. As I’ve mentioned in prior updates, it's to be expected as distributions for the 2022 calendar year were an anomaly.

 

Friday 31st March 2023

There's a lot to update today.

Firstly, Micheal Burry from The Big Short movie Tweeted I was wrong. A couple of months ago he tweeted ‘Sell’. Now two months later he tweeted I was wrong. 

It’s fantastic he’s kept himself accountable. This is rare air though. Most people love making predictions, especially about markets and asset prices. I was no different. For years after the GFC (2007-2009) I was convinced GFC 2.0 was around the corner. In my mind property and shares were due to crash to unprecedented levels. The opportunity cost of those years is something I can never get back. It was a fantastic lesson for me on two accounts.

One, I have no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to predictions and two, be incredibly careful who you listen to. If you take the time to track the accuracy of the predictions people share, as I’ve done over the past decade, you’ll learn it’s largely a mugs game. 

Next ANZ bank announced some of their branches will no longer assist customers with in-bank cash deposits and withdrawals. Staff will direct and assist customers with ATM deposits and withdrawals. 

This push to a cashless society is terrible. Nearly everything convenient in life feels great now but has a huge cost down the line. Tap and go using credit/debit cards or things like Apple pay on our phones are wonderfully convenient. No arguments from me. But minimising and limiting the availability of cash is a problem.

The less control and access we have over our key resources - money being one of them - the more dependent on governments and institutions we become. Period. 

There is absolutely nothing good about this. 

Next, this week was a peak dividend payment week with close to $19 billion dollars going to shareholders while another $9 billion dollars is coming their way in the coming few weeks. 

March was a pretty solid month for the market.

Finally being the end of the quarter it’s spreadsheet time for those playing along.