3 impressive Aussie companies, how often should you invest & don’t listen to Michael Burry

**Bryce Leske** (0:00)
Indexes around the world are hitting record highs. The Europe 600, Germany's DAX, the FTSE 100, the IBEX in Spain.

**Alec Renehan** (0:07)
It's pretty nuts. The US is also hitting all-time highs, and the Australian market is hitting all-time highs. It's just been good news so far.
You want to be invested.

**Bryce Leske** (0:17)
Welcome to another episode of Equity Mates, a podcast where we explore what's possible in the world of investing. If you've just joined us for the very first time, a huge welcome to our community. My name is Bryce.

**Alec Renehan** (0:28)
And I'm Ren. And today we've got a number of companies reporting how they're going. We've got Michael Burry making another big prediction, and we're answering two questions on dollar cost averaging. Bryce, big episode today.

**Bryce Leske** (0:40)
Massive episode, Ren. Before we jump into it though, a quick reminder that something else big is coming here at Equity Mates, and that is FinFest.

**Alec Renehan** (0:47)
The biggest thing we've done.

**Bryce Leske** (0:49)
The biggest thing we have done. It's Australia's largest finance festival. Come and join over 2,000 other Australians at Carriage Works here in Sydney October 24th, as we celebrate investing.

**Alec Renehan** (1:00)
There will be five stages, food trucks, bars. It's going to be a lot of fun. There's going to be a lot of good speakers and you're not going to want to miss it.
Head to equitymates.com/finfest to secure your ticket now.

**Bryce Leske** (1:11)
FinFest is proudly brought to you by Betashares. All right, Ren, let's get stuck into it.
We're going to start with reporting season. There's a lot been going on around the world. We're going to look at how it's been globally and then dig into some of the companies here in Australia.

**Alec Renehan** (1:28)
Yeah, and for people new to investing, reporting season is when companies share how they've been going. In the US and Europe, it's quarterly. Well, Europe is sometimes half yearly. But in the US, it's quarterly. In Australia, it's half yearly. We're just coming out of these international results and we're just getting into Australian results. And as you said, Bryce, it's just been good news so far.

**Bryce Leske** (1:53)
Yeah, which is, I guess, contrary to what the headlines are telling us from an economic point of view. But let's have a look around the world. The US, 88% of companies have reported. Earnings growth on the S&P 500, top 500 companies in the US is 50.4%. That is its highest since 2021 That's the earnings growth rate. Europe has also had a stellar reporting season. Earnings growth of the stock X 600, that's the European index, is 22%.
And indexes around the world are hitting record highs. The Europe 600, Germany's DAX, the FTSE 100, which is the UK, the CAC 400 in France, the IBEX in Spain.

**Alec Renehan** (2:36)
CAC 40 in France. You gave them an extra 360 companies. Yeah, it's pretty nuts. The US is also hitting all-time highs, and the Australian market is hitting all-time highs.
So there's been a lot of good news. I think the important thing to note as well is it's bigger than just Big Tech. It feels like if you were just reading the headlines, that this is like an AI-driven rally. Big Tech is actually underperforming a lot of other sectors in the US and in Europe. The equal weight S&P 500 index is actually beating the market cap weight.
For people who are unfamiliar with that difference, all that means is that when you give Walmart and PepsiCo the same weighting as AAPL and Microsoft, the market actually has done better than when you give Big Tech more weighting.

**Bryce Leske** (3:26)
Yeah, all 500 companies have an equal shot at contributing.

**Alec Renehan** (3:30)
Yeah, and that doesn't mean all 500 companies are doing well, but enough of them are doing well.

**Bryce Leske** (3:35)
Yes.

**Alec Renehan** (3:37)
So that's the context leading into reporting season. As is always the way in reporting season, companies with good news try and go first. You generally get good news early and then you maybe get some bad news buried a bit later.
So with that caveat in mind, we've started really well.

**Bryce Leske** (3:56)
In Australia.

**Alec Renehan** (3:56)
Yeah.

**Bryce Leske** (3:57)
Yes, very well.

**Alec Renehan** (3:58)
We've got a few companies that we're going to dig into in a bit more detail, Nick Scali, ResMed and REA Group. But before then, we just wanted to do a quick fire list of companies that have reported with numbers that caught our eye and a lot of good numbers that caught our eye.