His thesis is we are a safe, reliable nation in a global sea of uncertainty.<\/a>\u00a0And, he says, we are on the cusp of building our fourth economy (the first three being agricultural, industrial and financial services).<\/p>\nThere was little mention of the mining boom, other than that critical minerals will help shape the next economic phase for Australia, one he says is shaped by energy and technology.<\/p>\n
He rattled off Australia\u2019s impressive statistics. Inflation around a third of its peak, without mentioning it\u2019s above the Reserve Bank\u2019s target range and hampering any chance of a rate cut.<\/p>\n
Economic growth in the top 2 major advanced economies, he says.<\/p>\n
No mention of course that Australia has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the OECD. The average corporate tax rate in the OECD is in the low 20s. Got a company in Australia? You\u2019ll pay 30 per cent.<\/p>\n
Not that long ago, Chalmers was trying to push through a tax on unrealised gains, which would have stymied venture capital and dulled investment in start ups.<\/p>\n
So perhaps it shouldn\u2019t have been surprising that not one of the 10 investment ideas was born in Australia, unless you count First Eagle\u2019s Matthew McLennan\u2019s pitch to buy gold. Australia has gold mines.<\/p>\n
Chalmers was talking up Australia having the data centres, workforce, quantum and AI know-how. It can be a digital hub in the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to get caught up in the latest fads. Tech is booming, so much so there\u2019s warnings we\u2019re firmly in a bubble. With technology coupled with our abundance of sun, wind and critical minerals Australia can be a global leader in the net zero transformation.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure if Chalmers was still in the room when Marathon Resource Advisers\u2019 Robert Mullin got up and said his stock pick is SLB, once known as Schlumberger, a traditional oilfield services company and gas producer (albeit part of Mullins\u2019 pitch is that it\u2019s really a tech company).<\/p>\n
Apart from Monday.com and PB Fintech, the stocks recommended have businesses based in very traditional sectors: retail, manufacturing, services and entertainment.<\/p>\n
That said, technology is driving a lot of what they\u2019re doing. Morimatsu International, the stock pick by Stillpoint Investments\u2019 Eric Wong, makes factories in a box. It manufactures the kit in China, ships them around the world, where they are assembled by companies benefiting from governments trying to resuscitate local manufacturing.<\/p>\n
Sohn, which raises money for medical research, is a place to learn about new ideas and thematics. If you bought the 11 stocks last year you\u2019d have a return of about 42 per cent, although keep in mind some went very well such as Couer Mining up 148 per cent over the past year (while ON Semiconductor Corporation tanked 30 per cent.)<\/p>\n
Time will tell how this year\u2019s stocks will perform.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s little doubt big money has been made in tech. In fact, if you backed Cathie Wood from Ark Invest\u2019s tip for Tesla at the Sohn conference in 2019, and invested $US10,000 you\u2019d have shares worth $201,000 today.<\/p>\n
Munro Partners\u2019 Nick Griffin picked Amazon the year prior, when it traded at $US80. If you\u2019d invested $US10,000 then, and held it, you\u2019d have tripled your money with shares worth $US29,697.<\/p>\n
But perhaps the big money has been made. As activist investor Dan Loeb says, there\u2019s an AI bubble. But he thinks the bigger players such as Microsoft and Amazon won\u2019t feel the brunt anywhere near as much as some of the smaller players trading on very large multiples.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a bubble but I don\u2019t think the bubble is at Microsoft and Amazon or the hyperscalers,\u201d he told the conference. \u201cWe do see real signs of excess. Quantum companies have got very speculative.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article first appeared in The Australian as Australia Inc missing in action on day of investment optimism<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For all the talk of a technology boom, just two of the 10 investment ideas thrown out at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-290573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}