This is the first article that I have read that really explains the history of the sub prime crisis.

Vanguard have developed a chart which highlights the movement of the Australian sharemarket over the past 30 years and indicates where the market has fallen greater than 10 per cent - seven times since 1978.

Every now and again we come across some well written articles which we like to share with you.

A week may be a long time in politics but it's proving to be an eternity on financial markets, as investors increasingly worry about runs on banks, global economic collapse and a deep recession.

We welcome Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's announcement that the Australian Government (which is AAA rated) will guarantee all retail and wholesale deposits with Australian banks, building societies and credit unions and Australian subsidiaries of foreign-owned banks.

We believe that this initiative should go some way to instilling both confidence and trust into the global financial markets.

Stock prices sank sharply on Monday in the wake of Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy announcement over the weekend. Other firms perceived to have credit-related worries sank sharply as well: shares of insurance giant AIG fell 60.8%, Washington Mutual was down 26.7%, and Citigroup lost 15.1%. Among the thirty Dow Industrial component issues, only Coca-Cola managed to eke out a gain, closing up 25 cents for the day.

It's one of the great urban legends of the investment world—a supposedly fact-based piece of folklore that people eagerly swap around the modern conversational campfire of email, the internet and the media.

The 2007/2008 financial year is rapidly coming to a close. We thought we would prepare a checklist of considerations that you may wish to take advantage of before 30 June 2008.

This tax effective structure was originally introduced in the pre-election promises made by the Labour Government. It now forms part of the Federal Budget 2008 announcements.
We thought it would be a useful to keep you informed as to the information we have at hand. There may well be some further improvements or clarifications made before its intended launch date of 1 October 2008.

At Horizon Wealth Management, we continually strive to ensure that our offering remains relevant and competitive and that the products we offer to our clients as part of our advice proposition are properly researched. We recently received a communication from MLC which further re-enforces its selection as preferred insurance provider for our wealth management clients.

As a result of the collapses of 2 brokerage houses, Opes Prime and Lift Capital and the problems experienced by Tricom, some clients have enquired as to the legal structure of their Macquarie Wrap accounts.  In order to clarify the position, Macquarie Wrap have published a Q&A on the typical questions that most of our clients have either asked or have considered.

Margin lending has received a lot of press recently as a result of the collapses of 2 brokerage houses, Opes Prime and Lift Capital and the problems experienced by Tricom.  In order to clarify the position we requested National Margin Lending and Macquarie Investment Lending to draft a note explaining the legal position.

This article explains the background to the current turbulence in the markets. The message is clear – stay with high quality products that can deliver the market return with the least amount of risk and avoid being exploited by big brand name Product Providers dressing up ‘flavour of the month’ products. It also further re-iterates the role played by Fixed Interest in ones portfolio.

We have spent the most part of the last few weeks reviewing our clients' portfolios against the back drop of the recent market pull back caused by the recent credit crisis. The conclusions that can be drawn is that a structured and sound investment methodology backed by academic research that captures the asset class return has a far more reliable outcome than that deployed by investors who try to time the market and pick stocks on either a random or under researched basis.

The purpose of this note is to summarise and explain the events that occurred at the end of last week. In this regard, there is likely to be more volatility over the next few weeks.