Welcome to another HotCopper weekly wrap by yours truly – have you missed me!? – if I had to pick one big takeaway from this week, it’d be this: Canberra’s recent CGT reforms are causing a cool-down in the property market, and we’re only 10 days into FY27.
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(Pretty much everything I’m talking about in this wrap I talked about earlier this week for the HotCopper Wire podcast which you can check out via the link above.)
So how will the CGT changes affect the stock market in the coming twelve months? In my view, that’s the biggest question for the next twelve months, and the answer is we don’t know yet.
There are fears the CGT changes could hurt the ASX IPO market, but right now, that’s isn’t the case – in fact, with 14 companies listing across July and into early August, it’s actually one of the busier pockets of the year thus far.
But IPOs aren’t the only things that can debut on the ASX – there’s also ETFs. According to research wrapping up FY26, more than 70 ETFs listed on the ASX through FY26. At least something more exciting than <3% growth happened on the XJO for the year.
So what’s going on? Well, ETFs are popular, and have been for years. They’re more sensible investments than stockpicking, let’s be real, and while a lot of media coverage seems to blame Gen Z for converting to ETFs, that ignores that older investors love them, too.
(Recent research suggests 1 in 5 young Australians have ETFs in their portfolio – remember when Treasurer Chalmers claimed two months ago that not many Australians invest in the share market? There’s a please explain that got forgotten.)
Now if you ask me, it’s the rise of thematic ETFs – especially those related to silver, AI, and even oil – which can become the vehicles for meme trades in volatile periods that underscore some of the popularity here.
But if Betashares’ own research is right – and they’re biased, of course, being the purveyors of ETFs – it could be more tax effective in the future to own ETFs over individual stocks under Australia’s new CGT regime, so I suspect the ETF renaissance probably isn’t going anywhere.
That we now enter unchartered territory with a 50% CGT discount taken off the table is in my view the big story to keep tabs on in the coming six months.
Anyway, plenty more went on this week. Enjoy my quick fire summary list ahead of the weekend.
- WISETECH: Controversial founder Richard White stepped down from the company this week, and investors responded positively. However, the company has a long way to go to hit at least one A$70 price target it’s got.
- TELSTRA: The latest national telco to suffer a 000 outage bungle, Telstra’s share price was virtually unchanged this week despite being the subject of front-page-news and at least one report of a potential related death.
- VAULT MINERALS: Genesis Minerals lobbed an A$5B takeover offer at Vault Minerals this week, effectively a gold play developer, which is well over half the entire value of Genesis Minerals’ own value cap – perhaps explaining why Genesis shares sold off on the news.
- FDC CONSOLIDATED: The largest ASX IPO of the year thus far kicked off this week, construction giant FDC Consolidated Holdings, and the debut has been resolutely positive, even if not as exciting as debuts for drone tech companies roughly two months back.
- URANIUM STOCKS: After Australia and India this week signed a deal to provide Oz uranium to India, Aussie uranium stocks shot up – but as newcomers to the ever-fickle uranium investment community might be about to learn, with no real fundamental shift, profits might get scalped quick.
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