Investors seek dividends, interest; Aussie tourism trails; 3 mins a day to beat cancer
Published: August 16, 2026
Investors seek dividends, interest; Aussie tourism trails; 3 mins a day to beat cancer
Some of the best business stories start over coffee.
If you’re in Sydney on Wednesday, 19 August, start your morning with Fear & Greed and Airwallex. We’re taking over a cafe to talk about what comes next for Australian businesses going global.
What's on
- A live economic briefing from Fear & Greed's Sean Aylmer and Michael Thompson — what's driving Aussie businesses to expand overseas, and what to watch in the year ahead.
- A fireside chat with James Teodorini, Head of ANZ at Airwallex, on the company's journey from a coffee-shop problem to a global financial platform serving more than 676,000 businesses — and where AI is set to take finance next.
- Great coffee, good company, and the chance to meet the Airwallex and Fear & Greed teams.
The details
- When: Wednesday 19 August. Breakfast from 7.30am; session 8.00–9.30am
- Where: Vogue Cafe, Darling Harbour, Sydney
Places are limited, so get in quick to save your spot.
Fear-o-meter
AMP Chief Economist Dr Shane Oliver on earnings seasons in Australia and the US:
Australian shares fell around 1.6% (last week) which was partly a correction after a 5.6% rise in the prior two weeks left them overbought.
But earnings reports are off to a slightly soft start with worries about slowing housing finance commitments weighing on the banks and sharp falls in industrial, property and material shares also weighing on the market.
And of course, the Australian share market doesn’t have much exposure to the AI related stocks that are back in favour again.
The US earnings reporting season has now seen more than 90% of S&P 500 companies report with around 87% exceeding expectations.
The consensus expectation for earnings growth has now risen to 33% year-on-year. After adjusting for one off asset revaluations at Alphabet and Amazon its now blown out to 50% yoy. Earnings growth is being led by energy and tech companies.
Capital spending by the top five hyperscalers has now been revised up by around 50% and while it initially caused some concerns, those concerns appear to have faded for now.
Fear & Greed Q+A today
On what to expect this week in the economy, including the labour force figures on Thursday:
We're probably going to see - or the market's sort of banking on - a more modest increase in employment, around that 15,000, and the unemployment rate to be steady to maybe up one tick from 4.4 to 4.5. And remembering at the end of 2025, the unemployment rate was 4.0 per cent. So it's probably up about half a percentage point in the last six to nine months.
‘Deteriorating’ is too strong. It's softening. As the economy slows down, of course, by definition businesses need fewer workers to do their jobs, and that's particularly in hospitality and areas like that where there's a bit of a slowdown occurring, and they're labour-intensive parts of the economy.
The RBA forecast is 4.8 per cent unemployment over the next eighteen months or so. Yeah, that seems about right.”
Australians invested a record $6.8 billion into exchange-traded funds last month as the slowdown in the property market from tax reforms, and three rate rises earlier in the year, encouraged a shift out of property.
Money flowing into income funds alone, excluding cash products, hit a record $1.8 billion in July, accounting for almost a third of all money flowing into ETFs for the month, according to Global X.
Investors have been piling into dividend funds since the government overhauled capital gains tax in the federal budget in May. They have also started to broaden their hunt for income, putting a record $1.4 billion into bond ETFs in July, surpassing Australian equities.
An income fund prioritises cash distributions - dividends or interest - over capital growth. So rather than buying a stock and hoping for its share price to soar, investors are looking for other ways to make money.
ETFs have also become more popular because they net gains and losses internally, and the new capital gains tax regime is levied on the net result. That means that any outsized surge in a single share price will be offset by laggards elsewhere in the fund, potentially reducing the tax bill.
Greed-o-meter
| Asset class | 30yr return % | After 30 years $ |
|---|---|---|
| US shares | 10.8 | 218,544 |
| Australian shares | 9.0 | 132,931 |
| International shares | 8.6 | 117,612 |
| Australian listed property | 7.8 | 94,261 |
| Australian bonds | 5.2 | 45,871 |
| Cash | 4.0 | 32,459 |
| CPI | 2.7 | 22,092 |
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What would $10,000 invested for the last 30 years have earned you? Vanguard research shows US shares have delivered the best returns, outstripping Australian shares, property and bonds. Today's table shows the relative value of $10,000 invested into different asset classes (assuming no acquisition costs or taxes, and all income reinvested).
Listen to today's episode 🎧
Source: Vanguard, reported in AFR
News in brief
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s federal gun buyback scheme has kicked off, at least in NSW, since it is the only state to roll out the initiative. Yesterday Albanese said he would continue to push other states and territories to sign up the to the scheme.
Nearly one in four of the country’s top 300 listed companies had the same auditor checking their books for more than 20 years, including one company, LendLease, that has had the same auditor, KPMG, for 70 years.
The average weekly ordinary time earnings for full-time adults has risen to just under $2,100. The growth rate – 1.6 per cent – was the lowest six-month pace since May 2022. Public sector wages were growing more than private sector wages.
Travel to Australia is on the rise, but we still haven’t gotten back to pre COVID levels of tourism. Last financial year, short-term arrivals to Australia jumped eight per cent to 9.1 million. That’s five growth years in a row but we still haven’t reached the peak of 2019, when 9.3 million turned up.
A new study says to reduce your risks for at least 13 types of cancer, jog up and down the nearest steps for three minutes or stand up from your desk or couch for 30 minutes.