Letters of the Week

CSR crunch

I recently brought CSR, thinking I would get them at the bottom of the cycle. Housing construction I believe is on the uptick. So I thought, at $1.35 a share and a 13c a share fully franked dividend, they looked like a good buy. Today they are trading at $1.25 and large volumes are still being traded. Is someone shorting them just to lower their price?

I see there has been a change in substantial shareholder, that being Black Rock. They made sales of 49,964,224 shares and purchase 43,250,734 in the year just ended. Any thoughts on what is going on here? I still think CSR seem to be a good buy and just would like your thoughts.

D Fleay

Editor’s response: Alan Kohler mentioned CSR specifically in his Weekend Briefing email last week, and while he stopped short of recommending it he noted its potentially attractive P/E and yield.

After accumulation

There is a lot of discussion about saving for retirement and the accumulation part of superannuation, but it seems that once you are in retirement phase you are effectively on your own. I have run a SMSF for years and survived the ups and downs of the market more or less! My husband and I retired a couple of years ago and I am becoming more and more aware of the finite nature of our resources. I invest across Australian shares, corporate bonds, real estate and cash, but there seems to be very little information on how to structure your portfolio at this stage of life. Is it possible to have a few articles about this please? P.S. I loved the symposium!

S Roberts

Editor’s response: Bruce Brammall recently wrote on the best way to structure pensions in the retirement phase of superannuation, and last November wrote an article on those diminishing resources as time goes by. In addition, Doug Turek’s article Rolling with the punches from earlier this year is a good in-depth resource for thinking about returns and asset allocation in general.

Carbon geography

According to our Prime Minister, Australians are the largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions per capita. Agriculture is a major contributor. Given the high gearing toward exportation of our agricultural produce (food and fibre) what component of these emissions can be apportioned to the end consumer on foreign shores when considering carbon taxes generated in Australia versus the ability to pass on the added cost to the end consumer? Ultimately they leave here as encapsulated carbon which is not released until it is consumed. This must also apply to other primary and manufacturing industries with export focus.

To read this week’s letters, click here