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Finance & Investment

10 investment experts show where opportunities may be in volatile markets today

WITH GEOPOLITICAL CONFLICT driving energy prices higher, bond yields rising, US tariff uncertainty persisting and artificial intelligence (AI) reshaping entire sectors, Australian investors find themselves navigating one of the most complex environments in recent memory.

InvestmentMarkets, an Australian independent investment marketplace, has brought together views from 10 leading fund managers, market strategists and sector specialists across equities, fixed income, property, private credit and global macro to cut through the noise – with each offering a distinct perspective on where the risks and opportunities sit heading into the second half of 2026.

Rather than a ‘single house’ view, this collection captures the diversity of approaches investors are weighing.

Their assessments range from global macro positioning and contrarian equity strategies through to unlisted property, mortgage funds and the new yield alternatives emerging on the ASX.

To sum the 10 viewpoints up: discipline and diversification matter more than ever.

Darren Connolly, CEO, InvestmentMarkets 

 “Most investors think they’re diversified, but true diversification means more than holding a few different stocks.

“It means exposure across asset classes, geographies and income sources – and it means having parts of your portfolio where the cash flows aren’t driven by market sentiment at all.

“That’s the gap we see most often, and it’s the one that hurts most in periods like this.

 

Michael McCarthy, CEO, Moomoo ANZ

 “I’m seeing signals from bond markets, currency markets, cryptocurrency markets, and share markets that are all lining up with the same message – growth is slowing and interest rates are headed higher.

“The best time to prepare for volatility is at the beginning when you devise your strategy. The next best time is when markets are going well.

“The third best time is now, because it’s never too late to act.” 

 

Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, founder, FNArena 

 “The share market, outside of a very small selection of winners, is now basically becoming a value proposition for investors who can look beyond the immediate headwinds.

“The whole AI narrative is a very long-term story. It’s going to change the world, have no doubt but the way it does is open for debate.”

 

Simon Raubenheimer, director, Contrarius Investment Management Simon Raubenheimer Contrarius March 2026

“It is tempting to get excited about shares that are down 70 to 80 percent in a short space of time, but there’s a serious risk of buying a value trap.

“Our challenge is to be extremely disciplined in avoiding companies that face existential risks, even if they look cheap in the rearview mirror.”

 

 

Marc Jocum, product and investment strategist, Global X 

“The current dividend yield on the Australian share market is around 3.2 percent, the lowest it’s been for decades.

“We are heavily weighted into financials and materials, which make up 50 to 60 percent of the market, and significantly underexposed to the sectors projected to grow earnings at double digits.

“Don’t forget that earnings drive the majority of share market returns.” 

 

Michael Saba, portfolio manager, Arculus Funds Management

 “The landscape has changed dramatically. Hybrids are being phased out, but that doesn’t mean they’re dead, there are still 38 issues and around $37 billion outstanding.

“What’s exciting is the range of new yield products emerging. It’s a sector that has just reached adolescence – it’s going through growing pains, and that’s good, because it will sort itself out.”

 

Nick Alcock, Australian Secure Capital Fund (ASCF) 

 “Since October 2021, APRA has maintained a 3 percent mortgage serviceability buffer. The unintended consequence is that we now see situations where hopeful refinancers can’t even service with their current lenders.

“Borrowers still need funding and projects still need finance, but the traditional banking system is no longer willing to provide it in some cases and that’s the gap private lenders have stepped in to fill.”

 

Vaughan Hayne, managing director and co-founder, Exceed Capital 

“We’ve seen rents on the Gold Coast increase 40 percent in two years, with A-grade office vacancy under 1.7 percent, the lowest it’s ever been.

“Some of our A-grade buildings have moved from $460 to $650 per square metre.

“Construction costs and labour costs are at record highs, which means less new supply – which is generally a good thing for existing commercial property owners. Less supply, more demand, pushes up rental prices.”

 

Michael Fazzini, sales and distribution executive, Capru

 “The biggest insight in property development that most investors don’t realise is that most of the profit comes from what you pay for the land.

“Market price for land in our world isn’t the last transaction of a similar site or per square metre, it’s working backwards from what the finished product is worth, the build costs, and the minimum return needed to make the project viable.

“Get that wrong and no amount of execution can save you.”

 

Marcus Cleary, head of distribution, Oreana

“Volatility is a pricing problem, not a cash flow problem.

“Whether it’s tariffs, tech selloffs or oil shocks, the price volatility and breadth of that volatility isn’t seen within the direct asset class because the cash flows we deliver are linked to CPI and backed by long-term leases.

“Regardless of the economic environment, families are still sending their kids to childcare.”

 

Richard Collier, CFO, Heartland Bank 

 “Australians aged over 60 hold more than $3 trillion in property, yet less than 1 percent of that available equity has been unlocked.

“The total reverse mortgage market is only around $5.5 billion against an addressable market of around $600 billion.

“With superannuation balances of just over $4 trillion across the entire system not sufficient to fund the lifestyle Australians expect in retirement, this is the largest store of value that remains untapped.”

www.investmentmarkets.com.au

 

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Some advantages of ‘buy now pay later’ come to the fore in difficult times

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

AS OF 2026, ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) has become common in Australian restaurants and home delivery services.

Mangala Martinus, managing director of Payments Consulting Network, said BNPL has now become quite common everywhere.

“We’re already seeing that 27% of people are using flexible payment options for groceries and essential so I think this is really an extension,” Mr Martinus told Talking Business.

He said that comes from the e-commerce payment experience report that Payments Consulting Network had done with Power Retail which surveyed more than 1000 consumers.

Mr Martinus said using BNPL for dinner was just a natural extension of people using it for groceries.

“You’ve got to remember that buy now pay later in Australia provides a zero cost or low-cost financing option,” he said.

“We’re still having a lot of people experiencing a cost of living crisis and so it is just an easy options in terms of financing for them.” 

Keep BNPL risks in perspective

In terms of risk, Mr Martinus said, people just needed to be conscious of not over-extending themselves and spending too much.

“Really it’s a discretionary spend if we’re talking about dining out or getting takeaway in at the home delivery so it’s a natural use of buy now pay later as a service,” he said.

Mr Martinus said the Payments Consulting Network report found that the main use of BNPL was in areas like fashion, beauty, electronics and, increasingly, for travel.

“You’ll find it used for more and more options because 40% of consumers have already used a flexible payment option,” he said.

The Payments Consulting Network found BNPL was highest in certain demographics.

“The survey found it was highest in the 25-34 year olds where 58% had used it as a payment option in the last six months,” he said.

Gen Z also favours BNPL

Mr Martinus said it was an option that would also apply to Gen Z.

“It is the younger generation as they tend to have less access to credit card facilities because they don’t have the financial history yet,” Mr Martinus said.

There were no issues with people deferring payments on BNPL platforms as most already had credit cards.

“For a lot of users, they just use a 55-day interest free period,” he said.

“With buy now pay later, if you do it in four instalments, you are not paying for the credit costs, it’s being paid for by the retailer, so you’re getting free access to credit as a consumer.

“If you pay it within the period, you are generally not paying any interest fee.

“So there’s a huge benefit for that and so that’s why a lot of people use it.”

Mr Martinus said it was no surprise that restaurants had adopted BNPL.

“It will be just another payment option,” Mr Martinus said. “It’s providing an option that consumers want to use.

“Overall, 40% of consumers have used a flexible payment option over the last six months.”

Mr Martinus said BNPL was very much the future of the dining industry.

“It’s certainly an option and extending the customer base” he said. 

www.paymentsconsulting.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness 

https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-11-interview-with-mangala-martinus-from-pay

 

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Sydney Uni professor breaks down Iran war impacts on our economy

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

HOW LONG will we be feeling the effects of the Middle East War?

According to professor David Ubilava from the University of Sydney it could take months to repair the infrastructure. That’s even if the war ends tomorrow.

“Even if this war ended today, it doesn’t mean markets will go back to normal tomorrow,” Professor Ubilava told Talking Business.

“It will take time. No one has a crystal ball to know how long it will take.”

Prof. Ubilava said war in the Middle East affects Australian producers and consumers through more than just petrol prices. However, fuel costs remain by far the most impactful factor in food supply chains. 

Fuel and fertilizer hit

The Middle East conflict has spiked Australian fuel and fertilizer prices by disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, forcing oil above US$100 a barrel and halting key urea shipments.

With Australia importing  about 90% of its fuel and relying on the region for urea fertilizer, farmers are facing soaring input costs just before winter cropping, threatening higher domestic food prices.

That said, surging fertiliser prices, caused by the very same supply chain issues, will hurt Australian farmers and, potentially, consumers. The impact of fertiliser prices alone on grocery prices is likely to be modest, he said, but it remains a factor that cannot be neglected, especially should its availability become an issue

Prof. Ubilava said fuel would be available in most places but it will be considerably more expensive. That, he said, would narrow the margins of farmers.

“There are two aspects here,” he said. “One is the price and the other is the availability.

“The price effect is bad for famers but it’s something they’ll absorb. Our farmers are large commercial producers, they tend to absorb these shocks of input costs.

“Where it becomes tricky if no fuel is available, then no activity can take place.”

Fertilizer pain on the horizon

Prof. Ubilava said while the impact of fuel prices is there for everyone to see, the impact of fertiliser shortages is not that clear.

“Agricultural commodity is a very small share of the food item that we buy,” Prof. Ubilava said.

“As an example, wheat is 5-7% of the cost that we pay for a loaf of bread. The majority of the costs that we pay comes to you from marketing margins, and probably a larger share of it is fuel prices.”

He said this translated into food inflation through the supply side effects and he did not expect this would add pressure to grocery bills.

“While there are inflationary pressures at the moment, I do not believe that the current price shocks will translate into the levels of inflation we saw two or three years ago,” Prof. Ubilava said.

He said fertiliser shortages would not translate into higher priced grocery items.

“Probably fuel prices will have a bigger effect if at all, but how large this effect will depend on how long this conflict will last,” Prof. Ubilava said.

“If the conflict resolves itself in the next couple of weeks or so, then there’s probably a good chance we’ll return to normalcy soon.

“But if it were to linger for multiple months, then I would be much more pessimistic about what will happen to food prices.

“So fuel prices, more than fertiliser prices, will likely drive food inflation.” 

www.sydney.edu.au

www.davidubilava.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness  

https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-8-interview-with-david-ubilava-from-the-uni

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Housing industry says ‘Stop taxing housing harder if you want more homes built’

THE Housing Industry Association (HIA) has called on the Australian Government to rule out any changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax in this year’s tax review. HIA warns that further tax instability would choke off new home building and deepen Australia’s housing shortage.

Releasing HIA’s new report, Taxation of Housing and its Impact on Supply, HIA chief economist, Tim Reardon said governments “cannot make homes cheaper by taking more from them”.

“You don’t fix a housing shortage by taxing housing harder,” Mr Reardon said. 

“And you certainly don’t make homes more affordable by destabilising the tax settings that support new home construction.”

The report found that housing was already one of the most heavily taxed sectors in the Australian economy, with taxes applied at every stage of the housing lifecycle. Many of these taxes fall most heavily on new housing, directly increasing costs and reducing the feasibility of new projects. 

“The political reflex has been the same for decades,” Mr Reardon said.

“First it was to blame investors. Then foreigners. Then foreign investors. Meanwhile governments quietly add more taxes, more charges and more costs to housing, and wonder why supply keeps falling short.”

HIA’s analysis shows that investors play a critical role in housing supply, commencing more than 40% of new homes built in Australia, and an even higher share of apartments and rental housing.

“When you discourage investors, you don’t free up housing, you stop it being built,” Mr Reardon said.

“Investors don’t neatly switch from established homes into new construction when taxes rise. They leave the housing market altogether.”

The report challenges claims that changes to negative gearing or capital gains tax would improve affordability or help first home buyers, noting that housing prices were determined by supply and demand, but housing shortages are only resolved by building more homes.

“New homes don’t exist in isolation,” Mr Reardon said.

“They become established homes. Taxing established housing more heavily reduces the value of new housing as well, which makes fewer projects stack up.”

HIA is urging the Australian Government to provide certainty to the housing market as part of this year’s tax review.

“If governments are serious about increasing housing supply, the first step is simple,” Mr Reardon said. “Commit to tax system stability for residential investment, rule out changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, and stop layering new taxes onto new housing construction.

“More homes will only be built if governments stop treating housing as a revenue base and start treating it as essential infrastructure.”

CPAs say super tax overhaul would unfairly penalise retirement savings

PROPOSED changes to superannuation tax rules risk unfairly penalising Australians’ retirement savings by mishandling the treatment of franking credits, CPA Australia has warned.

CPA Australia superannuation lead, Richard Webb has raised serious concerns with the exposure draft legislation for the Treasury Laws Amendment (Better Targeted Superannuation Concessions) Bill 2025, arguing the current approach ignores the fundamental purpose of franking credits and could distort investment decisions. 

Mr Webb said the proposed framework would lead to inequitable outcomes for superannuation funds, particularly where franking credits were excluded from the calculation of fund earnings for Division 296 purposes.

“Franking credits exist to ensure income is taxed at the shareholder’s correct tax rate. Ignoring them in the new super tax framework produces an unfair and inconsistent result,” Mr Webb said.

“For many super funds, franking credits are effectively a refund of tax already paid. Treating those refunds as irrelevant when calculating earnings is at odds with how our tax system is designed to work.”

The submission warns that the draft legislation would penalise super funds holding assets that generate franked dividends, even where those dividends ultimately attract little or no tax due to superannuation’s concessional tax rates.

“In practice, the proposal could result in identical investment returns being taxed differently, simply because one includes franking credits and the other does not,” Mr Webb said.

“This creates artificial incentives that could push trustees away from Australian equities, potentially harming both retirement outcomes and capital markets more broadly.”

CPA Australia noted that franking credits and similar tax offsets should be treated as part of a super fund’s net income, reflecting their true economic value, rather than being excluded under the proposed Division 296 methodology.

The submission includes a detailed case study demonstrating how the current policy settings produce higher calculated ‘earnings’ for franked dividends compared with unfranked dividends, despite the cash received in the dividend being the same.

“This isn’t about gaining an advantage,” Mr Webb said. “It’s about fair and consistent taxation that reflects real income, avoids unintended consequences, and maintains confidence in Australia’s retirement income system.”

CPA Australia has urged the government to amend the legislation to ensure franking credits and other similar tax offsets would be properly recognised when calculating superannuation fund earnings.

“Given the complexity and long-term impacts of these reforms, it’s essential the final legislation gets the fundamentals right,” Mr Webb said.

The submission, produced jointly with Chartered Accountants Australia and the New Zealand and the Institute of Public Accountants, is available here.

www.cpaaustralia.com.au

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Experienced banker adapts loans to meet real business needs

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

THERE ARE finance brokers everywhere. But a few stand out.

One is Charles Zerafa, a senior finance broker with Integrity Finance Australia. He has decades of experience in corporate and business banking.

How long? Well, 35 years in business banking – including almost a decade at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Mr Zerafa’s clients include commercial construction builders, manufacturing companies, retailers, investors and syndicates of families or people buying property together. He specialises in doing commercial lending with properties of up to $50 million. 

He said banks don’t have time or skills – and they are too conservative – to delve into people’s finances to help them and lend them at a higher rate. As a result, business owners will come to him,

“Business owners that have been around for a long time know whether it’s a good deal or not and they and will seek me out say ‘Can you do me a better deal than what the banks are offering me?’” Mr Zerafa told Talking Business.

“And I’m saving clients just by restructuring finances, I’m saving them tens of thousands of dollars a month.”

Banks find client prospecting difficulties

The banks, Mr Zerafa said, have difficulty building relationships with prospective clients.

“Maybe it’s clients I’m seeing, but a lot of them have complex corporate structures,” he said. “Every director’s got personal debts, they’ve got an investment trust where they’ve got some investment loans, their operating business has got funding requirements and they’re often doing a little side project like a subdivision or investments in other small areas as well.

“So when they’re trying to assess their borrowing capacity, they’re taking such a conservative approach with everything – by the time you desensitise their income – there’s not a lot left and the bankers don’t have the experience to get their heads around what’s happening … and they always take that conservative approach.

“They (some clients) can’t meet it on paper according to the bank’s facilities, but that’s because they don’t know how to structure the loans properly.

“Sometimes you’ve got to start from scratch and restructure all the client’s loans in order to increase their borrowing capacity as well. So there are things I would do differently to how a bank would approach things.”

Banking experience drives innovation

Mr Zerafa said his big challenge is getting people to understand how his experience in banking makes him different from other brokers.

“I’m using my banking and corporate finance training in the banking industry to help clients,” he said.

“The best way I explain it is the banks want to out you in a better position so they have less risk on their side. And now where I’m working for myself, I’m helping business owners increase their profitability so they can continue to grow and achieve their financial goals.

“So it’s loan structuring, loan negotiation, understanding the client’s position and finding a solution that maximises their position.”

Mr Zerafa said his experience over 35 years in banking has seen him work with every sized business and lifecycle, from startups to succession planning and buyouts.

“It’s a skill set that you don’t acquire over five years in banking,” he said. “You don’t acquire that sort of skill set in such a short time.

“It takes a while to go through so many loan applications,” Mr Zerafa said. 

www.integrityfinanceaustralia.com.au

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness

https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-25-interview-with-charles-zerafa-from-integ

 

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Beating NFT fraud using blockchain tech

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

ONE OF THE BIG PROBLEMS now facing NFTs – or non-fungible tokens – is fraud. This is happening world-wide.

NFTs are unique digital assets that represent ownership of the brand. NFTs are virtual records of ownership of either physical assets or digital assets, such as digital artwork, concert tickets, or access to games. The value of NFTs differs based on the unique characteristics of the underlying asset.  

Now a lot of NFTs have drawn large amounts of fraudulent criminal activity. The impact of NFT fraud for individual buyers can be significant, as criminals take an average of $300,000 per fraud event. These fraud instances also cause reputational damage to the NFT industry.

Enter Paiverse, a Dubai-based platform that uses blockchain to ensure the NFTs have a provable provenance and are free of fraud. Now these NFTs seek to be the primary destination for luxury brands to market and for consumers to buy and sell their luxury goods via blockchain technology, in a secure and transparent manner.

“We are quite unique in our solution in that we’re giving an asset-backed NFTs,” Tim Bhatnagar, co-founder of Dubai-based Paiverse told Talking Business.  

“We work directly with the brand-owner. We take possession of the asset, we transfer it into a digital form.

“So now you are trading an NFT but it’s always being backed by something physical. So yes, you can buy and sell and trade it. We insure it, we ship it, but technically you are always connected with the brand and you are trading their asset rather than something I created on my computer.”

Fraud is a major issue

Mr Bhatnagar said fraud has become a huge issue with NFTs.

“To create a company in this environment has been a real challenge,” he said.

“What we are trying to assert it is the individuals understand the brand. What we are doing on our platform is giving a digital title to a physical asset. So you know the brand has released a luxury item, you are trading its digital title and you can redeem your digital title at any given time.”

Paiverse operates in 37 countries but it relocated from the Bahamas to Dubai for regulatory reasons

“We decided to move to Dubai because the regulator here is putting a lot of precedence on getting the right kind of ecosystem developed because so many people have been burnt of late and lost their savings,” Mr Bhatnagar said.

“A lot of regulatory agencies globally have seen this as a negative thing.”

Why the blockchain works

Mr Bhatnagar said one of the key ways Paiverse addresses this problem was through the use of blockchain because it offered full provenance and traceability.

“It’s about due diligence and I think the regulators are starting to catch up and we are trying to help as many regulatory agencies due to our background and to understand how to develop these kinds of regulations,” he said.

“There have been mainstream companies that have been doing this for decades and for generations, like Christies.

“What we are mirroring now is and trying to do exactly the same thing but on blockchain.”

Mr Bhatnagar said blockchain allowed people to do due diligence to ensure there would be no fraud.

“By its very nature, you can go an trace everything,” Mr Bhatnagar said. 

“It’s one of the most remarkable technologies.” 

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness

https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-26-interview-with-tim-bhatnagar-from-paiver

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