Insights

Despite the possibility of a soft opening this morning, the stock market starts a new week looking to consolidate last week's gains.

Major share market indices sliced through key resistance levels in strong trading overnight, breaking the bear spell and suggesting the weakness of August and September is over. The bullish outlook is confirmed by rallies in key industrial commodities.

Calming markets and higher share prices are soothing fears, leading to higher investor confidence levels, which in turn sparks share buying, further calming markets and pushing share prices higher, lifting confidence further.

Aussie stocks were fierce out of the gates at the morning's open. Traders were eager to capture the momentum of Morgan Stanley overnight. In a note released by the bank, major miners BHP and RIO were both upgraded and enjoyed handsome gains following the release.

As the global share market gyrates, some investors are toying with the idea of allocating part of their portfolio to precious metals.

Weak share prices, cheap debt and stagnant earnings combine to make an ideal takeover environment.

The market is priced around crisis levels in the absence of any real crisis.

If you're in the last decade before retirement, these are the key actions to take.

This week we look at Rio Tinto, New Hope, Japara Healthcare, ANZ and Origin.

Considering the falls in Acrux.

Strong rallies in commodity indices, led by energy markets, should see local investors shrug off tepid US stock market leads to power shares higher today.

"Robo advice" may sound like a buzz phrase, but the concept is very simple: a computer is told to find the mix of investments that will deliver an adequate return with minimum risk. The reason a computer is good at the job is because it involves many thousands of computations. That's the type of work humans were happy to hand over to computer programs decades ago. The process isn't totally clinical, however. A user needs to start with a realistic investment target.

Australian investors are set for further gains after weaker US jobs numbers deferred expectations of interest rate rises. The game changing non-farm payrolls read spurred positive moves in international shares and higher commodity prices.

Don't miss LIC investor relations expert Boyd Peters of Investment Company Services, while executive chair of peer-to-peer lender DirectMoney Stephen Porges takes your questions. Plus, an overview of our model portfolios.

The largely small cap portfolio has added 9 per cent in its first quarter despite a falling market.

Despite launching in volatile trading conditions, our Income First Model Portfolio is slowly becoming invested and is outperforming so far. Dick Smith has proved a laggard, while Wellcom and Virtus have performed well.