Hi folks,

I hope you’re all hav­ing a great week and your port­fo­lios are going strong. I took Chris­sy to see ANNIE THE MUSICAL last week, her favourite musi­cal of all time (long sto­ry going back to her per­form­ing in it as a kid), so that was the high­light of our week.

The new inter­est rate rise by the RBA is pre­dictably play­ing hav­oc with the mar­ket, and some of the min­ing com­pa­nies in par­tic­u­lar have been hit hard. Let’s get into a look at our port­fo­lios.

All the Best,
Cam

QAV MYTH KILLERS

Why “Market Predictions” Are Worse Than Horoscopes

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates and one of the most suc­cess­ful hedge fund man­agers in his­to­ry, once said: “He who lives by the crys­tal ball will eat shat­tered glass.”

He’s being gen­er­ous.

At least horo­scopes are hon­est about what they are. Nobody expects Mys­tic Meg to have a CFA char­ter. But turn on finan­cial media and you’ll find an end­less parade of “experts” pre­dict­ing bit­coin’s tra­jec­to­ry, inter­est rate move­ments, prop­er­ty prices, and which stock is about to moon. These pre­dic­tions come wrapped in charts, dressed up in cre­den­tials, and deliv­ered with the con­fi­dence of some­one who has nev­er been pub­licly account­able for being wrong.

Here’s the thing: if any­one could pre­dict mar­kets with any degree of accu­ra­cy, they’d be obscene­ly wealthy. Most of these pun­dits aren’t. And the ones who are rich? They made their mon­ey get­ting paid to pre­dict, not by bet­ting on their own pre­dic­tions. That tells you every­thing you need to know.

Why We Lis­ten Any­way

We’re wired to want some­one to know what’s going on. Believ­ing in prophets, kings, and emper­ors was prob­a­bly a sol­id evo­lu­tion­ary sur­vival strat­e­gy for most of human his­to­ry. The skep­tics? The ones who pub­licly ques­tioned the ora­cle? They got sac­ri­ficed to the gods or exiled from the tribe. They did­n’t stick around long enough to pass on their skep­tic genes.

So here we are, descen­dants of believ­ers, still look­ing for some­one to tell us what’s com­ing next.

Horo­scopes exploit this need cheap­ly and trans­par­ent­ly. Mar­ket pre­dic­tions exploit it expen­sive­ly and with a veneer of respectabil­i­ty. At least your horo­scope won’t charge you 2‑and-20 for the priv­i­lege of being wrong.

The Actu­al Dif­fer­ence

Horo­scopes are vague enough to be unfal­si­fi­able. “You may encounter an oppor­tu­ni­ty this week.” Sure. Fine. Can’t prove that wrong.

Mar­ket pre­dic­tions are spe­cif­ic enough to be verifiable—and they fail ver­i­fi­ca­tion con­stant­ly. Yet some­how, the pun­dits keep their plat­forms. The econ­o­mists who pre­dict­ed eight of the last two reces­sions still get invit­ed back on tele­vi­sion. The cryp­to influ­encer who called for $100K bit­coin in 2022 is still post­ing charts in 2025.

There’s no account­abil­i­ty loop. Horo­scope writ­ers at least have the decen­cy to not pre­tend they’re doing sci­ence.

What Actu­al­ly Works

The alter­na­tive to pre­dic­tion isn’t paralysis—it’s process.

Instead of try­ing to fore­cast where a stock is going, look at where it’s been. Actu­al num­bers. Actu­al per­for­mance. Is the com­pa­ny mak­ing mon­ey? Can you buy it at a dis­count to its val­ue? Is the trend your friend or your ene­my?

This isn’t excit­ing. It does­n’t make for good tele­vi­sion. Nobody’s book­ing you on Bloomberg to say “I don’t know what the mar­ket will do, but here’s a com­pa­ny trad­ing below its intrin­sic val­ue based on cur­rent earn­ings.” Unless, of course, your last name is Buf­fett.

But it works.

The biggest ben­e­fit of ignor­ing pre­dic­tions is clar­i­ty. Peo­ple pre­dict­ing a boom? Don’t care. Peo­ple pre­dict­ing a crash? Still don’t care. Some influ­encer says this stock is going to make a killing? Show me the num­bers or shut up. Bit­coin to a mil­lion dol­lars? Explain to me how to cal­cu­late the val­ue of a sin­gle coin or stop wast­ing my time.

The Buck­et Prob­lem

Think of it this way: the list of things peo­ple believe might be true is enor­mous. Thou­sands of gods, mon­sters, mir­a­cle cures, get-rich-quick schemes, and mar­ket pre­dic­tions. Some of those things will turn out to be true. Most won’t.

Your job isn’t to believe in all of them equally—that’s impos­si­ble and con­tra­dic­to­ry. Your job is to sort them into buck­ets: things that might be true, and things that are most like­ly to be true based on actu­al evi­dence.

Some peo­ple sort based on what their fam­i­ly believes. Some sort based on what makes them feel spe­cial. Some sort based on what sounds sophis­ti­cat­ed at din­ner par­ties.

And some sort based on what the evi­dence actu­al­ly sup­ports.

The Bot­tom Line

Mar­ket pre­dic­tions are astrol­o­gy for peo­ple who think they’re too smart for astrol­o­gy. They scratch the same psy­cho­log­i­cal itch—the des­per­ate human need to believe some­one knows what’s coming—but they come with high­er fees and low­er self-aware­ness.

At least your horo­scope knows it’s enter­tain­ment.

The next time some­one tells you where the mar­ket is head­ing, ask them one ques­tion: what’s your track record? Not their cre­den­tials. Not their con­fi­dence. Their actu­al, ver­i­fi­able, account­able track record of being right.

The silence will tell you every­thing.

STOCK ANALYSIS OF THE WEEK

As we’re now in “Report­ing Sea­son”, we won’t be buy­ing any Aus­tralian stocks until they report. And there’s noth­ing on my buy list this week that has report­ed yet, so I’m going to hold off and keep check­ing every cou­ple of days.

For edi­tion 7 of the U.S. Light mem­ber email, I did an analy­sis of the pil­lar of Colombia’s ener­gy scene, Ecopetrol (EC). U.S. Light and Club mem­bers can read it here. We’re also talk­ing about it in more detail on the U.S. episode this week.

On the full Aus­tralian pod­cast this week, Tony did a deep dive on CTI Logis­tics (CLX). See the pod­cast link down below if you want to lis­ten to his analy­sis.

BUY LIST

Each week, we pro­duce a buy list based on our val­ue invest­ing sys­tem that we share with our QAV Club mem­bers. The intend­ed pri­ma­ry pur­pose of this buy list is for club mem­bers to use as a ref­er­ence for com­par­ing their own buy list. In the­o­ry, all of our buy lists should look pret­ty sim­i­lar each week.

Below is a link to the AU list for this week:

QAV Aus­tralian Val­ue Invest­ing Buy Lists 2026-01-31

Below is a link to the US list for this week:

QAV Amer­i­can Val­ue Invest­ing Buy List 2026-02-02

PORTFOLIOS

We com­pare our per­for­mance to what we think is the most rel­e­vant bench­mark (SPDR 200 in Aus­tralia, S&P500 in the USA), but if you’re new to invest­ing, these com­par­isons might not mean much. Instead, you can com­pare our per­for­mance to the top-per­form­ing Super Funds in Aus­tralia.

AUSTRALIAN

QAV DUMMY

Five Year Report: Over the last five years, our port­fo­lio is +17% p.a. vs the bench­mark +10% p.a.

Month­ly Report: The AU Dum­my Port­fo­lio was ‑0.23% p.a. for the last 30 days vs the bench­mark +2.25% p.a.

No trad­ing in that port­fo­lio this week.

For the 2025 FY, our port­fo­lio is +20% vs +6% for the index.

QAV LIGHT

In the last 30 days, the Light port­fo­lio was +1.26% vs the index which was +1.19%. Even Steven.

Our most impres­sive return for the last 30 days is pow­er and com­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture ser­vices provider GNP, which is +25% for the month. We’ve owned GNP since 14/11/2024 when we bought it at $2.54 — it’s now $7.76 which means it’s up 206% in a lit­tle over a year.

For the last 12 months, the Light port­fo­lio is +38% vs the index +9%, rough­ly QUADRUPLE MARKET.

Since incep­tion (Feb 2022), the Light port­fo­lio is +21% vs the index +11%, dou­ble mar­ket, right on tar­get.

Become a QAV Light Member today and start your investing on the right track

If you want to find out what we’re trad­ing in QAV Light each week, sign up to become a mem­ber. You’ll get an email from me every Mon­day let­ting you know what we’re buy­ing and sell­ing in that port­fo­lio. You can choose to copy our trades or not. It’s the eas­i­est way to start your rules-based invest­ing career… and you don’t even need to know the rules. I’ll fol­low the rules for you. It’s a good first step to even­tu­al­ly becom­ing a QAV Club mem­ber and learn­ing how to run the sys­tem by your­self.

AMERICAN

QAV DUMMY

Since incep­tion (Sep 2023), our port­fo­lio is +98% vs the S&P 500 +55%. Not quite dou­ble mar­ket but get­ting close. It’s been boom­ing again for some rea­son since late last year.

Our U.S. port­fo­lio for the last 30 days was +21% vs +0.3% for the S&P 500.

No trades this week.

QAV LIGHT

I recent­ly start­ed our U.S. Light port­fo­lio, and it’s had a slow start, and is cur­rent­ly ‑1.6% vs the S&P 500 +0.06%.

THIS WEEK’S EPISODES

QAV AU 905 — Water­ing the Flow­ers

CHRD: The Willis­ton Whale – QAV AMERICA 37

STOCK NEWS AND UPDATES

COMMODITIES

Since I put out the buy lists over the week­end, the Crude Oil price has fall­en and it’s become a Josephine again.

DISCLOSURE

Please review our trad­ing and dis­clo­sure pol­i­cy.

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That’s it for the week!

QAV A GOOD SHAREMARKET!

Got a ques­tion? [email protected]