MARKETS, REAL ESTATE & SME

Good morning dear readers! For those of you that missed our post yesterday, do not fret, we will provide an update later in this edition of Markets, Real Estate & SME. We won't muck about, lets get straight into it!

MARKETS

Bravo Nick! A wonderful illustration on the perception of value and where you can go buy 18 tonnes of Pork Belly!

Is this: Inflation or Deflation? (View the original article HERE)

By +Nick Hubble  • April 27th, 2013

The biggest question facing investors in this new age of centrally planned economies is this: inflation or deflation?

That sounds like a mind numbingly boring idea. So let’s put it another way.

Right now, the world’s policy makers are walking a tightrope. On the one side is a plunge into inflation. On the other deflation. The dramatic part about this tightrope is that it isn’t flat. It’s leading higher and higher. The further we go along the wire, the more dangerous a fall becomes.

If we get severe deflation, the entire monetary system of the world could collapse. Stock markets will crash, banks will fail, and paper and electronic wealth will disappear. It only gets worse. Without banks, supermarkets wouldn’t be able to restock inventory, petrol won’t be trucked to petrol stations and Tasmania would become a desirable place to live.

‘Inflation’ means a world just as chaotic, but in a different way. Prices would rise so fast that restaurateurs have to reprint new menus each week. Your spouse would rush down to the supermarket as soon as you’re paid to try and buy things at reasonable prices. Your entire investment portfolio would double, but only be worth half.

Now the question of inflation or deflation really means something, right?

But could things really get that bad? The answer to that question is yes, depending on how far we let central bankers and governments go along the tightrope. Back when your editor used to teach tightrope walking, we never got very far at all. In fact falling off elegantly was our speciality.

So in that spirit, how do you fall off a monetary tightrope without wiping out your wealth? How do you secure yourself from both an inflationary and a deflationary drop?

Get Real

The only kind of wealth that can survive both inflation and deflation is real tangible wealth. Real stuff has the advantage of being real (believe it or not). Its cash price can go up, down and all over the place without changing what it is. So, deflation or inflation, it doesn’t change.

Money is just a measurement. Well, it’s actually much more. It’s a unified medium of exchange allowing division of labour and solving the double coincidence of wants. But when it comes to investing, it’s important to realise that money is just a measurement.

If the price of a porkbelly on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) goes up 10%, it’s still just a porkbelly. What’s really changed in that scenario — the value of the porkbelly or the value of money?

You might answer that the value of the porkbelly has gone up, as you can sell it and get 10% more wheat bushels for your money. But what if you really want porkbelly? Hasn’t money then lost 10% of its value in your eyes?

Of course, porkbelly prices might fall 10% instead. Your money would be worth 10% more in terms of porkbellies, but 10% less in terms of everything else.

Now you probably don’t want any porkbellies from the CME (they come in lots of 18 tonnes). But if you can find things you do want, what would the effect of investing in them be? Would you withstand both inflation or deflation? Yes, because the value of your money would change, but the value of your real stuff wouldn’t.

Of course, you could end up selling the real assets you decide to invest in. Some of them tend to rise in real value over time. The word ‘real’ is crucial in that context. The value of a banana can increase even if its price falls. That’s because the prices of other items can fall faster, leaving you better off.

But porkbellies and bananas have a fairly poor investment history. Incidentally, bananas have outperformed the stock market though. The Dow Jones Industrial Average used to be worth more than double the amount of bananas it is today. In other words, the prices of shares have lagged well behind the price of a tonne of bananas.

Source: Sovereign Man

What other real investments might there be for you to protect yourself from inflation and deflation at the same time?

Real Investments

The March issue of The Money for Life Letter featured investing in wine. We can’t reveal exactly how, but it involved a time travel discount. You can find out more here.

Gardens are another opportunity. Fruit trees, vegetables and herbs can save you big dollars in the long run. Not to mention improving your lifestyle and health. Some families make a living by charging other people to pick their strawberry fields. How’s that for a life? All you do is own a real asset — strawberry plants — and other people pay you to pick and eat them.

Energy is a surprising opportunity to make a real investment. Solar panels and solar hot water systems prove their value by saving you money. In Europe, wood is the number 1 source of renewable energy. In Germany, 38% of non-fossil fuel consumption comes from burning it.

To be clear, power stations in Europe burn wood pellets and saw dust to generate electricity. Power companies just plant as many trees as they burn to offset the pollution. Because of technology, the process of generating power can actually reduce the amount of carbon in the air! All you have to do is plant more trees than you burn.

Why not use the remarkable technological breakthrough of burning wood to your advantage and install a fireplace? It could cut your heating bill in half.

All these investments in your life are inflation and deflation proof because they are real. They can’t be ruined by central bankers or stolen by bankrupt financial institutions. If you definancialise part of your wealth, you can watch the tightrope act safely from the ground below.

Nickolai Hubble
The Daily Reckoning Weekend Edition via +Daily Reckoning Australia 

REAL ESTATE

Australian Property Trusts Overbought: Morgan Stanley

Australian real estate investment trusts, known as A-REITs, have run hard so far this month, outperforming the broader S&P/ASX200 index by more than 8% on average.

That performance has led Morgan Stanley MS +0.09% analyst Lou Pirenc to question whether their premium is justified.

“In the absence of a pick-up in growth, we believe they ...continue reading

Reuters

250 Australian suburbs tipped to double in value

Real estate data firm RP Data says there will be a doubling in property values in over 250 Australian suburbs in the next decade. At the same time, renters in almost 800 suburbs are likely to see weekly rent prices double. RP Data believes Australia’s top property investment prospects include 263 suburbs or towns with the potential to see 100 per cent growth in the next ...continue reading

How property-hungry Aussies see the global economy

Three hundred and fifty people cram into Brisbane Sofitel's Ballroom Le Grand on a stormy Friday afternoon.

I ask ex-journalist Kathy Mac Dermott, the Queensland executive director of the Property Council of Australia, if it's a barometer of improving fortunes that so many people are attending its $A135-a-head lunch.

The drawcard isn't a boozy Friday lunch, she says, but rather the insights of today's speaker, ...continue reading

SME

Australian SMEs lose out from failure to participate in report on small business finance

Australia has once again failed to participate in an international report on small business finance and this omission will cost small business.

The Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation conducts a yearly report, Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2013: An OECD Scoreboard, which looks at access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises.

The report was published on Friday and found access to finance remains a key challenge for small and medium-sized enterprises and a stumbling block to recovery in most countries.

The report found SMEs requesting loans in 2011 generally faced ...continue reading

Social media use by Australian small businesses set to rise

Econsultancy, the Sydney based specialist publishers of independent research, analysis and advice on digital marketing, social media, ecommerce, SEO, mobile and tech for businesses has said time spent on social media in business is likely to grow even further.

Following the publication of Bibby Financial Services Australia’s bi-annual study of over 200 small businesses in February, Econsultancy said it ...continue reading

Startups could contribute $109bn to economy by 2033: PwC

Summary: Backing the startup sector's claim that it could help save the Australian economy once the mining boom goes bust, PwC has released its report showing that entrepreneurs could provide an injection of $109 billion and 540,000 jobs to Australia.

Recent claims about how the Australian economy will flounder unless the country invests in startups has left critics questioning what impact entrepreneurs could possibly have. According to Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), it's AU$109 billion and 540,000 jobs.

The report, "The Startup Economy: How to support tech startups and accelerate Australian innovation", estimates that ...continue reading

I passionately agree with Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Though capital expenditure in mining has come to an end, mining will still generate massive amounts of profit to the economy for years to come. It has however lost its flavour, along with capital expenditure decreasing, so the number of jobs associated are decreasing. The Startup Scene in Australia is still young and is definitely undergoing massive growth, we can expect great things from Australian Startups!

Until the next time dear readers, have a great weekend and keep your eyes on Generation Y Investor for some exciting posts coming during the week!

MARKETS, REAL ESTATE AND SME

Hello dear readers! I trust you have had a good weekend so far and that this week has been another successful step forward in your investment journey... Remember, it's not with how much you start, but when you start that is important!

Later in the week we will be providing you some insight into what Venture Capitalists are looking for, especially with regards to Start-up Technology Companies, with special thanks to +Benjamin Chong, one of the partners of the new venture capital fund, Sydney Seed Fund.

But for now, lets get back to what's important and why you are here!

MARKETS

You all should by now realise that I love Gold... Some more great insight from +Dan Denning via the +Daily Reckoning Australia 

The Rocking Boat of Stocks (View original article here)
 By Dan Denning • April 19th, 2013

When you're an addict there are only two extremes. You're either flying high or you're coming down. And as Tom Petty wrote, coming down is the hardest thing. It doesn't happen slowly. It happens fast.
Stocks, bonds, and commodities all flew high in the first quarter of the year. Hedge funds, traders and the public abandoned caution, levered up, and dove into anything they thought would benefit from easy money. And it worked. But now we're coming down.
This is one of those unintended consequences of living in a low interest rate world. All the world's money printers have lowered their prices. With the returns on cash sufficiently trashed, and the cost of borrowing low, the barriers to entry for becoming a Fed-funded speculator were gone. Whether they liked it or not, investors became speculators and all the bets were one way: long. 

Now, all the bets seem to have moved the other way at the same time: short. Maybe this is simple profit taking and de-leveraging. Maybe it's panic. But it's definitely an example of market moves becoming more volatile. Everyone is on the same side of a trade, and then switches to the other side. First port, then starboard. The boat gets rocked.
Naturally, when you're on a boat that's rocking, you start to wonder if this sucker's going down. Probably not today, although it wasn't a big reversal day on Wall Street. The focus has turned to earnings. 

Investors discovered that ignoring them in favour of Fed policy doesn't change what's going on. Business in America is okay, but not radically improving enough to justify higher multiples on stocks.
The gold price is limping back to the US$1400 range. Is it a temporary reprieve? In our weekly update to readers of The Denning Report, we're taking up the idea there is a behind the scenes battle within the global financial system for physical ownership of the world's best collateral (gold). But on the front lines, there's the relationship between gold and stocks, shown in the chart below. 

To recap, the ratio between the gold price and shares in Berkshire crashed through the 14 level we had our eye on and kept right on going. It overshot. But what is that on the right side of the chart? Could it be one of those dramatic 'V' shaped reversals that mark a bottom in a market?
It could. But the ratio has been oversold based on the relative strength index (RSI) for most of 2013. This reflects the drugged-up trading mentality referred to above. Stocks had a great first quarter relative to gold. The early signs are that the second quarter won't' be as great. 

But let's not forget the drug dealers in all of this. 'Three Fed presidents say disinflation may prompt easing,' reports Bloomberg this morning. 'If inflation looked like it was going to sag further on a persistent basis, I would certainly consider stimulus for the purpose of bringing inflation up to target,' says the Richmond Fed's Jeffrey Lacker. 

Other Fed Presidents agree. 'We should defend the inflation target from the low side,' said St Louis Fed president James Bullard. That is such a bizarre way of putting things that it's hard to know what he means. But we think he means the Fed should keep pumping money into the bond market as long as consumer price inflation remains low.
Investors have rejected this strategy in the last ten days. One way of reading gold's fall is that speculators don't think QE will lead to asset inflation. Thus, the stock sell off. Yet the Fed persists with a strategy that doesn't produce real economic growth and leads to huge volatile swings in financial markets. Go figure. 

In the meantime, even the Chinese are starting to get the idea of pumping up markets by expanding the money supply. 'Monetary easing might be helpful but the role is very much limited,' said Jin Liqun, the chairman of the board of the China's sovereign wealth fund. 'It is a necessary but not sufficient condition.'
It's not exactly an unqualified endorsement of QE. In fact Jin also said, 'If printing money could solve the problem, it would be so easy. Every country can print money...Some people believe quantitative easing is a panacea. It's not a panacea. If you don't do something else to support this policy, it's a recipe for disaster.' 

Plan for disaster. But how we get there should be interesting. As for Australia, there may be some relief coming for mining companies in the form of a lower Australian dollar. It won't help with the sell-off in commodities as QE speculators take their bets off the table. But it will help with lowering the cost of doing business in Australia, which is incredibly high. 

Above you'll find a ten-year chart of the world's latest greatest 'reserve currency'. We put that in quote marks because no reserve currency worthy of the name would be quite so volatile. People using that designation prefer to focus on the last two years, with the Aussie at parity or better against the US dollar. They ignore the huge 37% drop in 2009 - the last time the world deleveraged in a hurry and commodities lost their lustre with speculators. 

Is a big fall in the Australian dollar possible? Of course. Is it imminent? That's harder to say. The Aussie dollar is overvalued by about ten per cent, according to IMF deputy director Min Zhu. That's a pretty generous assessment, given the fall in the terms of trade and bulk commodity prices. 

For Aussie investors, a fall in the dollar is a mixed blessing. It's probably bullish for industrial stocks and exporters. But to the extent it's driven by falling commodity prices and lower capital flows, it's bearish for resource stocks. There's probably a pair trade in there. But we'll leave that to Murray over at Slipstream Trader. 

In the meantime, life goes on. And with all due respect to Tom Petty, coming down may not even be the hardest part. The hardest part is when instead of a little consumer price inflation, you get a lot. When funny money no longer boosts asset prices, but leads to exploding consumer prices, we go beyond a monetary experiment and into a sociological one. Stay tuned.
Regards,
Dan Denning
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

REAL ESTATE

Real estate agents' confidence soars

Australian businesses may be doing it tough, but at least real estate agents are feeling pretty good.

A survey of property industry sentiment shows confidence has risen to its highest level in 18 months.

That goes against the wider trend in business sentiment, which remains stuck at below-average levels.

And there's good reason for real estate agents feeling positive: house prices are increasing and investors and owner-occupiers are starting to borrow more.

Property Council of Australia chief operating officer Ken Morrison says there is a ...continue reading

Fixed interest rates fall to all-time low in Australia

Fixed interest rates have fallen to an all-time low - but most home loan customers are failing to take advantage.

Some financial institutions are offering three-year fixed rates below five per cent and experts believe they will not fall any lower.

By comparison, major lenders' standard variable rates are still averaging more than 5.7 per cent, even after the typical 0.7 per cent discount.

Yet the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows only 12 per cent of customers who took out mortgages this year have fixed their loans, compared to more than ...continue reading

ASIC issues warning on property advisors dabbling in SMSFs

Australia’s corporate regulator has issued several warnings over the self-managed superannuation fund industry, in a report which targets the property market as a particular source of trouble.

The warning comes after remarks made by Australian Securities and Investments Commission head Peter Kell, who said last week the regulator is concerned about advice being given about SMSFs which is inadequate or misleading.

In the latest report, published yesterday, ASIC says ...continue reading

Purchasing investment properties in SMSFs is something you really should investigate if you have a reasonable amount built up over time! Make sure you get advice from accredited professionals when considering this as an option.

SME

Accountants – embrace the cloud or lose SME clients

A majority of Australian SMEs will consider replacing their accountant if they fail to make the transition to cloud-based computing software, according to new research by CCH.

The research of over 1000 SMEs and over 200 accountants revealed that the shift to cloud software is approaching critical mass, with 52 percent of SMEs saying they would replace their accountant if they fail to move to a cloud-based system. The proportion reached 72 percent among younger SME owners (aged 18-35).

Only 23 percent of ...continue reading

Google targets Australian SMEs, but Asia-Pac boss says too many still don’t understand online

Small businesses in Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific are becoming crucial to revenue for companies like Google, but many SMEs still don’t understand the benefits of doing business online, says Google Asia-Pacific president Karim Temsamani.

Google is aggressively chasing small and medium businesses, which Temsamani says is a growing part of Google’s overall revenue and its Australian operations.

“About 2.5 billion people have access to ...continue reading

University of New England’s Future Campus to foster student start-ups

Student entrepreneurship is expected to be a key focus of Future Campus, a new high-tech student support centre launched today by the University of New England in Parramatta, NSW.

Future Campus is designed to support the nearly 2,000 UNE students living and studying in western Sydney, who aren’t always able to travel to the university’s main campus in Armidale.

The centre, which is partly funded by the Federal Government through its Structural Adjustment Fund, has been described as a ...continue reading

Always good to see universities embracing entrepreneurs. I believe there is a serious shortage of quality entrepreneurship programs in Australian universities. If you are considering such a program, make sure you do your research on the various options available, especially considering the fantastic programs which are being offered by Incubators and other providers, focusing specifically on starting a business etc.

Short and sweet this Saturday... We hope you found this helpful, please don't be shy to let us know if there are other topics you wish to hear about on Generation Y Investor. Until the next time dear readers...

MARKETS, REAL ESTATE & SME

Hello dear readers and welcome back to another Markets, Real Estate & SME.
We have been busy the past few weeks restructuring and changing our focus to bring you more relevant content and opportunities! Watch this space as things will start to evolve over the next few months... But for now, back to why we are here, your dose of what's important and relevant in the world of "things that affect your wallet"!

MARKETS

Some fantastic insight from Greg Canavan via +Daily Reckoning Australia 

The Market Is High (view original here)

By +Greg Canavan  • April 11th, 2013

It took a while, but overnight the S&P500 just broke out to new, all-time high. That’s confirmation of the bull market, right? Maybe it is...but you might want to check this out before diving in.

What took the market higher?

What, do you really need a reason?

Well, if you must. There’s always a reason. But a word of warning first...none of the ‘reasons’ really mean anything. In fact, the whole idea of the market being a ‘market’ in the true sense is a fraud. The place is a wild, debauched casino run by the house, for the house.

It reminds us of a show we watched last night. It’s the one where British actor Ross Kemp goes to some of the world’s most dangerous places. Aptly, it’s called Extreme World.

Last night he was in the French Mediterranean port city of Marseilles, going into housing estates with poor immigrant populations. These estates are conduits for massive illicit drug flows. Millions of euro’s pass through them daily, yet the inhabitants are still poor.

That’s because most of the profits go to the rich and well protected — the Corsican drug families, as it turns out — who take little to no risk. The scraps go to the poor inhabitants, who take all the risk.

A bit like the stock market, really. The big banks and the individuals that run these organisations take absolutely no risk in terms of their personal position. They take MASSIVE risks with other people’s money, but there is no flow on effect, no ramifications for their reckless behaviour. They are a protected species...the beneficiaries of a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ system.

You, on the other hand, are the drug runner. You’re taking a big risk in an attempt to scrape together a few extra percent here and there. If you get it wrong, you won’t receive a bailout. Or worse, if someone else gets it wrong, you may receive the pleasure of a ‘bail-in’, as happened recently to ‘savers’ in Cyprus. Drug barons are merciless...so are bankers.

But the big daddy in all this, the ‘patron’, is the Federal Reserve. It procures the drugs (from nowhere) and hands them on down the line. It’s a dirty and corrupt system, and overnight we received further confirmation of this grimy little sham we call the market. From the Financial Times:

‘The Federal Reserve leaked the minutes of its last rate-setting meeting to bank lobbyists as well as congressional aides and trade associations.

‘On Wednesday the Fed published its March minutes in the morning rather than the afternoon as had been scheduled. The central bank said it was doing so because they had already been accidentally released on Tuesday afternoon to a distribution list, comprising “mostly congressional staffers and trade association members in Washington”.

‘However, on Wednesday afternoon, the Fed published that list, which included lobbyists at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, among other banks.

‘Though the list was predominantly comprised of staffers to members of Congress, it also included a significant number of employees working for banks, opening the possibility that they could have passed on the information to traders.’

We’re not going to make a big deal out of this. It’s hardly surprising. Rather than feel outrage, take it for what it is: confirmation that the financial system where you deposit your savings and accumulated wealth is in the late stages of degeneration and decline.

To keep you in servitude, the pushers see to it that the big indexes move to new highs. First the Dow Jones...then the S&P500. Meanwhile, your salvation, your detox and your ticket to financial freedom, gold, falls in PRICE (not value) to discourage you from breaking free, from getting your assets and wealth out of the system.

For history buffs, if you ever wanted to know what the decline of the Roman Empire looked like, you have a front row seat...

But we digress...we were looking for ‘reasons’ why the market rallied to a new high last night. Apparently, it had something to do with Bank of Japan (BoJ) governor Kuroda telling everyone what they already knew, that Japan will go ahead with its stimulus. It also had to do with China’s March trade figures, which the market liked (or just ignored) even though export growth missed forecasts and the data itself was widely laughed at.

China watchers were critical of the trade data. Exports to the US and Europe both fell year-on-year while exports to Hong Kong jumped errr....92%, bumping up overall export growth to a respectable 10%. Imports, apparently, rose 14%. The use of trade invoices to hide inflows of capital and fake export orders to gain government rebates were cited as reasons for the wild data spray.

Does anyone believe what China says about its economy anymore? More degeneration.

But don’t let dubious data get in the way of a rushing herd of bulls. Or stories about China’s first credit rating downgrade in 14 years. Journalists have to come up with something to explain the unexplainable. But the easiest explanation is that global central banks have provided party-goers with so many drugs that the party is getting out of control.

The punchbowl analogy no longer does it. And anyway, alcohol is a depressant. The Federal Reserve and its central banking pushers are administering stimulants all around. They have all the class and moral authority of a drug baron, rolling in riches while spreading addiction and misery to millions.

Misery, it seems, which is falling on those who conduct trade in Australian dollars. The persistent strength of the Aussie is killing manufacturing in Australia and even hurting the companies that are supposed to be the reason behind the strong currency — the miners.

US dollar commodity prices have been weak (underscoring the point that central bank efforts are doing little to improve the ‘real’ economy) and combined with a strong Australian dollar, the effect on Aussie miners has been significant.

Both Rio and BHP have pulled back on their expansion plans and are actively communicating to the market their strategies to cut costs over the next few years. It’s a far cry from the pre-2008 crisis era. Which is why we made the point yesterday that this current round of market craziness is very different to the last era.

We don’t know when it will end. But we stand in awe of the collective stupidity, ignorance or arrogance (we’re not sure which) of our ruling classes and moneyed elites, who have managed to get us all back to a much worse place than we were six years ago, all the while patting themselves on the back for a job well done in fostering ‘recovery’.

Regards,

Greg Canavan 

for The Daily Reckoning Australia

REAL ESTATE

Karratha leads growth in nations mining towns

Karratha’s town population has grown faster than any other Australian mining community, according to property analysts.

LJ Hooker Karratha Principal David Hipworth said statistics showing the town’s population grew faster than any other Australian mining community underlined the area’s investment potential.

Karratha’s population grew at a rate more than five times above the national average between ...continue reading

Mining towns are hot property as. Fantastic growth potential and in some cases bottom of the market buying. Try to stay away from one industry towns if you are risk adverse, otherwise take advantage of some of the opportunities in towns such as Kalgoorlie-Boulder where you can get low cost properties with 8% gross yields...

Outstanding in their yield

The focus back to the Australian office sector by the real estate investment trusts, superannuation funds and sovereign funds is forcing prices up beyond their values, according to investors.

While this trend will boost the bottom line, the market is cautious about over-inflation.

The head of research and consulting, Australasia at Jones Lang LaSalle, Dr David Rees, said at the group's investor conference in Sydney on Wednesday that yield spreads to real bond rates were near record ...continue reading

Source: +The Sydney Morning Herald 

As winter looms real estate agent activity starts to ease: RP Data

The RP Data listings index has started to ease from its seasonal peak over recent weeks.

The index peaked at 308.4 points over the week ending 24 March, which was its highest level since March 2011.

Since that time there has been a clear easing of the index. The recent strong ramp up in the ...continue reading

House-prices expectations rise to near three-year high

Australians’ confidence in the outlook for home prices climbed to the highest level in almost three years, a non-government survey showed today, in the latest sign near-record-low interest rates are energising the housing market.

The quarterly Westpac Bank-Melbourne Institute house-price expectations index rose to +53.9 in April compared with ...continue reading

SME

Sydney Seed Fund to sink up to $100k into 20 start-ups

The co-director of the Founder Institute in Sydney has partnered with two other serial entrepreneurs to launch the Sydney Seed Fund, offering tech start-ups up to $100,000 each.

+Benjamin Chong, who heads up the Sydney branch of the +Founder Institute, is also a partner at investment firm Right Click Capital and a director at global online travel agency +Jetabroad.

He has partnered with +Ari Klinger and Garry Visontay to launch the Sydney Seed Fund, an early stage investment fund aimed at “Sydney’s most passionate tech founders”.

The fund aims to invest between ...continue reading

Well done gentlemen! I wish you the best of luck with Sydney Seed Fund and look forward to see what fantastic companies will have their future secured thanks to your fund.

Source: Startup Smart

ANZ to explore smaller business market

ANZ (ANZ.AX) has announced that it will explore Australia’s smaller business market, having pledged $1 billion for start-up loans for the next year to attract new customers.

Whilst smaller businesses contribute roughly 20% of Australia’s GDP, the perception has been that the big four banks have favoured larger businesses and have ignored the needs of the smaller companies. The ANZ, however, is currently approving more than ...continue reading

Why ‘middle Australia’ is still prime selling territory for start-ups

Leading demographer Bernard Salt has warned start-ups not to deviate from selling to ‘middle Australia’ after new Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed that the average Australian is a married, 37-year-old woman.

New analysis by the ABS, using data from the 2011 census, reveals the average Australian is married and lives in the suburbs.

“While we know that no single person is average in all respects, the census shows that ...continue reading

NSW offers SME research funding

The NSW government has opened up the coffers on its innovation funding program for small business.

Launched last December, the Innovate NSW program is backed by $6.7 million in funding over four years and is aimed at boosting research collaboration between SMEs and the big end of town.

From today, Innovate NSW is looking for funding submissions from SMEs with a view to approving about 250 applications.

The program provides grants of up to ...continue reading

That's it for this weekend! Stay tuned for changes ahead and feel free to ask us questions with regards to material we have posted or queries you may have on your investment journey. If we can't answer your questions, we will find someone who can! Until the next time dear readers...