In short:

Members of HESTA will be unable to access most services until June, as the superannuation fund undertakes a planned outage to change its administration provider.

Advocacy group Super Consumers Australia says members are "rightly worried" about the lack of services, which follows recent market volatility.

HESTA has more than 1.05 million members and around $88 billion in funds under management, making it one of Australia's largest funds.

We’re working on setting up the ability to spend money easily in Australia. We’re looking at Wise for transfers and starting to live in Aus. As we roll into collecting pay, are there any banks or credit unions that are recommended or actively discouraged from using?

ASX plunges more than 6 per cent at open

The Australian share market has opened more than 6 per cent lower after a series of large falls on Wall Street on Thursday and Friday, and in the US share market futures this morning.

The benchmark ASX 200 index fell as much as 6.4 per cent in early trade, and was 6 per cent lower at 7,206 points by 10:10am AEST.

😁

The battle for control of listed brokerage Selfwealth (ASX: SWF) has expanded into three-way affair after the owner of the Syfe wealth management platform indicated it was willing to pay $65 million for a full takeover.

The indicative offer, pitched at 28c per share, is up from the already upsized 25c-per-share offer from Bell Financial Group (ASX: BFG) which has been recommended by the Selfwealth board.

The Singapore-based Svava Pte Ltd, which operates the Syfe platform in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia, also has made the fight that much harder for Bell by scooping up 43.4 million Selfwealth shares, giving it a potential blocking stake of 18.8 per cent.

Bell, which launched its first salvo for Selfwealth in November valuing the company at $51 million, was trumped by a rival $58 million bid from AxiCorp Financial Services, a Sydney-based global online brokerage group which was prepared to pay 23c per share.

Despite Svava lobbing an indicative bid of 28c per share, the Selfwealth board is sticking to its guns on Bell Financial’s latest offer of 25c per share – for now at least.

(this is slightly dated news)

edit: sounds like SelfWealth is currently preferring this offer, see email in comments

The number of companies on our stock exchanges is declining, as big, privately run funds take over established companies and increasingly provide capital for new startups.

Even when it comes to borrowing, there is a growing trend to avoid the middleman by bypassing the banks in favour of raising money directly from well-healed lenders.

While public investment markets such as stock exchanges still tower over private players, and our big banks dominate the lending landscape, the shifts are unmistakable.

According to ASIC chair Joe Longo, key risks around conflicts of interest, uncertainty over valuations, liquidity and debt levels are emerging as private financing becomes more prominent.

But, given it is so far mostly well-funded investors participating in this trend, what — if anything — should be done?

"The critical point is understanding whether there is a need for intervention …" he says.

"Whether it is for ASIC or another regulator to consider, or whether we leave the market and wholesale investors to their own devices."

That last option looks increasingly unlikely.

US President Donald Trump says he will announce new 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports into the US, including from Australia, which would come on top of existing metals duties in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.

In short:

US President Donald Trump's tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China have hit financial markets, with Australian shares falling sharply at the open.

Analysts say correction (a decline of of at least 10 per cent from the previous peak) on equity markets is now looking more likely.

What’s next?

US stock market futures are pointing to a fall when Wall Street resumes trade on Monday, local time.

Grattan's modelling shows that Australians who draw down their super at the minimum rate when they retire will leave the equivalent of 65 per cent of their original super balance unspent by the age of 92.

Tax payer subsidy for inheritance?

that many retirees are net savers, with their super balances growing for decades after they retire, for fear of outliving their savings.

"This is not how it was meant to be.

Isn't it ? How a something works is surely representative of how it was designed.

Does anyone have any advice or opinions they can share about ethically-conscious ASX ETFs?

There's a few lists around, for example:

• https://www.fool.com.au/2024/12/21/which-3-ethical-asx-etfs-performed-the-best-in-2024/
• https://www.canstar.com.au/investor-hub/10-top-ethical-investment-funds/

But it's difficult to have confidence in any of these ETFs without looking into them extensively, so I was hoping I might be able to leverage the community knowledge if people here have already looked into them.

I figure many funds may be less ethical than they put on. For example, ASX:VETH excludes fossil fuels, but has a large exposure to the Big Four banks, who are big investors in fossil fuels.

Also, return figures might be misleading if a fund's ethical criteria bias its holdings towards certain industries, meaning the returns could be boosted by one-off events in those industries. For example, Motley Fool notes that ASX:ETHI is biased towards US tech stocks, including Apple and NVIDIA, and so its performance last year was boosted by the AI landrush.

Fossil fuels and weapons are my highest priorities for exclusion, if that's useful context.

But in their new estimates, published last week, they say those super tax concessions will now cost the government $59.5 billion in 2025-26, which is $9.4 billion more than they were forecasting in January.

Would be chealer just to ditch Super and pay pensions? Or remove many of the tax concessuons anyway. That horse has bolted though I guess.

Earlier this year, the economist Chris Richardson said our super system was already acting like "a reverse Robin Hood" because it was taking money from poorer Australians and giving it to the rich.

Ahhh

My question is around pty Ltd taxation. Small businesses pay tax at 25 percent or so right.

So is this tax paid on the gross income or am I correct in assuming is paid on the gross profit?

Example

Company bills labour out at 100 an hour for 40 hours

This equates to 4000 dollars gross profit.

Is tax paid at this point paying 1000 dollars in tax.

Or do you then subtract say 50 dollars an hour of wages for 40 hours resulting I'm a net profit of 2000 then pay tax on 2000 dollars left in the companies account of 500 dollars tax?

Then the employee pays their share of tax on the 2000 dollars the company paid to them?

Secondly, if the company pays super on the hours worked, do they pay tax after super is deducted or before super is deducted from profits?

Sorry if this is confusing I'm very confused to begin with.

I Want to talk to an accountant but this time of year isn't the best for that, so I'm just trying to get some understanding before I go in and talk to one in the new year.

Interested in recommended reading on or around Finance or Investment ?

I am currently reading "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Taleb and am finding it fantastic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness

I came to it from a Howard Marks YT lecture where he referred to it and thought more and thought there might be suggestions here ?

I have a bunch of books by John Kenneth Galbraith i plan to get to and have read Peter Lynch, Buffett, Munger etal

Announcement with Q&A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTA3sKjvlio

In short:

Close to 200,000 households are either already breaching their mortgage contracts, or risk doing so, as the surging cost of home insurance forces many to dump their policies.

The insurance industry says price rises are out of their control due to factors including rising house prices and inflation as well as extreme weather.

What's next?

Financial counsellors are calling for the government to regulate pricing in the sector.