Rudi's View

To most investors, BHP Billiton ((BHP)) is pretty much the same as Woolworths ((WOW)), or Westpac ((WBC)), or Telstra ((TLS)). They're all listed blue chips, it's just that BHP's major growth engine is different while the others, Telstra on top, pay a higher dividend. Alas, nothing could be farther from the truth.

One of the world's most influential investment banks gives the green light to coal, iron ore and gold.

There's a divergence of views as to whether the rally in global equities has much further to go.

I did warn in April equities were once again too expensive and it would benefit those investors who were willing to wait for better entry points, but I did not foresee that six months later I would be looking back on five months of consecutive declines for global equities. But I can justify it, and in more than a few dozen ways.

History shows that P/E multiples have to hit rock bottom before they recover. And they’re not there yet.

Forget about the next rally and start focusing on sustainable dividends.

I have been filmed throwing Zimbabwean dollar notes in the air during a live interview on television, and I did show up in alien costume during ASX Investor Hour a few months ago, but on Thursday last week I really did something crazy. I used my presentation at the annual AIA investor conference in Sydney to present investors with an alternative to the high volatile, high risk situation in the share market: to participate without paying attention to the share price.

Surprise capital returns and sharp reversals of sentiment have been the defining characteristics of earnings season.

The share market works according to very simple, easy to understand, basic principles. If a company is doing well, it will become popular and thus its share price will rise. Popularity has a price in that expectations will rise too and since the share market is all about "anticipation" and less about "facts", this more often than not translates into a further rise for the share price.

With reporting season upon us again it’s time to revisit where the experts think the big misses and beats will occur.

It has taken a while but the Australian share market is (finally) catching up with the fact that future capex intentions will prove to be a lot less than surveys suggest. It's never a bad thing to have mining and energy companies expressing confidence in the future outlook of their industries and promising to spend a whole lot of dollars on expansions, new projects and on building new infrastructure to support their operations, but it's a completely different matter to actually be able to execute these plans.

It was the year 2005 and investors had started warming to the prospect of a new era of stronger commodity prices. This was reigniting interest in everything related to commodities, from the large and the known to the small, the long forgotten and the exotic. On the other end of the spectrum were biotech stocks of which many had shown lots of promise and excitement, but most had proved disappointing for both investors and for traders.