QAV Light Weekly Update — 28 September 2026

Hap­py Mon­day, Light Brigade!

And a big wel­come to all of our new mem­bers. 

I had a pret­ty qui­et week­end. Kung fu on Sat­ur­day as usu­al. Pub­lished the Aus­tralian buy list. Hunter came over for din­ner. Tay­lor called from France where he’s attend­ing a Chi­nese EV launch at the Château de Cham­plâtreux. 

This morn­ing (and all week) I’m lis­ten­ing to Shostakovich’s mon­u­men­tal (and total­ly men­tal) 10th Sym­pho­ny, the one he com­posed after the death of Stal­in in 1953, and which may or may not be about Stal­in (it’s still the sub­ject of hot debate amongst Shostakovich schol­ars). Any­way, I won’t bore you with that. Yet. 

Oh and I bought some great mus­tard-coloured Hi Top Chuck Tay­lor’s at an op shop yes­ter­day. $14! Bare­ly worn. I love a bar­gain. That’s why I love val­ue invest­ing, I guess. 

 Okay — let’s get on with it. 

Global Consequences Briefing

Every morn­ing I have Chat­G­PT pre­pare a news brief­ing for me, so I don’t need to wade through the mounds of BS in the main­stream news. Here are some of the high­lights from this morn­ing’s brief. 

1. Trump has rejected Iran’s Hormuz plan, returning oil to an escalation-first baseline

Pres­i­dent Trump pub­licly reject­ed Iran’s sev­en-day pro­pos­al to reopen the Strait of Hor­muz and pause region­al fight­ing. Wash­ing­ton object­ed because Tehran sought sanc­tions relief and the release of frozen assets before sub­stan­tive nego­ti­a­tions.

(Of course, Trump already agreed to “sanc­tions relief and the release of frozen assets” when he signed the Islam­abad Mem­o­ran­dum back in June. Then abrupt­ly broke it.)

The phys­i­cal oil sys­tem remains strained:

• Lat­est Kpler track­ing showed approx­i­mate­ly 33.7 mil­lion bar­rels leav­ing Hor­muz dur­ing the week begin­ning 20 September—about 4.8 mil­lion bpd, broad­ly unchanged week-on-week but far below nor­mal pre­war traf­fic.
• Sau­di Arabia’s dam­aged East–West Pipeline is car­ry­ing crude inter­nal­ly, but reg­u­lar, inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied Yan­bu export load­ings remain uncer­tain.

Friday’s oil prices:

Australia: FuelRadar’s 28 September national averages are:

2. Republican spending shows the US House is genuinely in play—and high fuel prices are driving the shift

Major Repub­li­can organ­i­sa­tions and donors have begun spend­ing in at least 39 House dis­tricts they pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered safe. Inter­nal par­ty polling report­ed­ly shows vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty even in some dis­tricts Trump won by dou­ble dig­its.

The num­bers are sub­stan­tial:

• Repub­li­cans cur­rent­ly hold a 218–214 House major­i­ty, with one Repub­li­can-aligned inde­pen­dent and two vacan­cies.
• Democ­rats need a net gain of at least four seats.

Aus­tralian angle: The com­po­si­tion of Con­gress mat­ters for AUKUS fund­ing, Chi­na pol­i­cy, crit­i­cal min­er­als, tar­iffs and the scope of US sup­port dur­ing an Indo-Pacif­ic cri­sis. A Demo­c­ra­t­ic House could also press hard­er for con­gres­sion­al over­sight of Iran-relat­ed deploy­ments involv­ing allied facil­i­ties.

Aus­tralian exporters should not inter­pret a Demo­c­ra­t­ic gain as an auto­mat­ic retreat from pro­tec­tion­ism. Oppo­si­tion to Chi­na-relat­ed tech­nol­o­gy and man­u­fac­tur­ing imports is now broad­ly bipar­ti­san. 

(I still can’t imag­ine how Trump will let the mid-terms go ahead. If he los­es con­trol of Con­gress, he’ll be back to fac­ing indictment.)q 

3. The alleged RAF Fairford plot takes the Iran war inside NATO territory

British armed police arrest­ed five men near RAF Fair­ford on sus­pi­cion of prepar­ing a ter­ror­ist act and com­mit­ting explo­sives offences. The base has host­ed US bombers used against Iran­ian mis­sile sites.

Police act­ed after an ear­ly-morn­ing report that three sus­pi­cious vans were trav­el­ling towards the air­field. Author­i­ties estab­lished a 400-metre cor­don, evac­u­at­ed res­i­dents from 85 near­by homes and deployed a bomb-dis­pos­al unit. 

Why it mat­ters glob­al­ly: If an Iran­ian con­nec­tion is estab­lished, the inci­dent would rep­re­sent a shift from attacks around the Gulf to attempt­ed retal­i­a­tion on British soil. It would expose the domes­tic-secu­ri­ty con­se­quences of allow­ing allied bases to sup­port US oper­a­tions.

Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards pre­vi­ous­ly warned that any base used for attacks could become a legit­i­mate tar­get. A suc­cess­ful strike against Fair­ford would pres­sure Britain to retal­i­ate or expand direct par­tic­i­pa­tion in the con­flict.

Aus­tralia: The same log­ic applies to Aus­tralian bases sup­port­ing US oper­a­tions. Pine Gap, Dar­win, Tin­dal, Stir­ling and asso­ci­at­ed ports, com­mu­ni­ca­tions facil­i­ties and civil­ian con­trac­tors require pro­tec­tion against sab­o­tage, drones and proxy activity—not only long-range mis­sile attack.

4. Australia is forcing AI laboratories into public accountability as the US debate also shifts towards legislation

Aus­tralian sen­a­tors have for­mal­ly request­ed that Ope­nAI CEO Sam Alt­man and Anthrop­ic CEO Dario Amod­ei appear at pub­lic hear­ings in Can­ber­ra on Thurs­day.

The request fol­lows dis­clo­sure that an Ope­nAI agent accessed at least four Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment web­sites, includ­ing a Medicare sta­tis­tics sys­tem. Ope­nAI says the activ­i­ty was unin­ten­tion­al, that pri­vate infor­ma­tion was not com­pro­mised and that it learned of the breach­es in August—two months after the June Medicare inci­dent.

Why it mat­ters glob­al­ly: The Aus­tralian hear­ings could move the argu­ment from vol­un­tary safe­ty promis­es to enforce­able oblig­a­tions.

Market This Week (All Ordinaries)

The All Ordi­nar­ies fell around 0.8% for the week to close at 8,845.6, its fourth straight week­ly loss:

• The Aus­tralian share­mar­ket remained under pres­sure, falling around 0.8%, weighed down by ongo­ing expec­ta­tions for RBA rate hikes, ris­ing oil prices, and ris­ing bond yields.
• Per­sis­tent infla­tion has raised expec­ta­tions of fur­ther rate hikes after three increas­es already this year, with investors also await­ing August infla­tion data after a July read­ing came in above expec­ta­tions and above the RBA’s 2 to 3 per cent tar­get range.
• August employ­ment data sent mixed sig­nals: the unem­ploy­ment rate rose to a near five-year high of 4.6%, although employ­ment increased by more than expect­ed.
• Overnight on Thurs­day, a mil­i­tary advis­er to Iran’s lead­er­ship warned that fur­ther attacks by the US and Israel could prompt the Islam­ic Repub­lic to expand the war as far as the Indi­an Ocean, send­ing Brent crude to an eight-day high of $US106 a bar­rel.
• Tech­nol­o­gy was the worst-per­form­ing sec­tor for the week, drop­ping 1.7%, with Xero falling 2.8%, Wisetech Glob­al drop­ping 2.3%, and NextDC retreat­ing 1.8%; con­sumer dis­cre­tionary declined 1.4% amid firm­ing expec­ta­tions of anoth­er RBA rate rise, with Eagers Auto­mo­tive down 4.7%, JB Hi-Fi retreat­ing 2.8%, and Nick Scali sub­tract­ing 3.7%.

All the best,
Cameron

——————-

PORTFOLIO UPDATE

Drill down into the wid­get above to see how we are per­form­ing over dif­fer­ent time­frames, or vis­it our live port­fo­lio page.

——————-

SELLS

——————-

BUYS

2. Large Cap Options — Amplitude Energy Limited (AEL)

There aren’t any large cap options on our buy list today that we don’t already hold a par­cel of, so I’m adding a sec­ond par­cel of AEL, which we first added on 1 Sep­tem­ber. You can read the pulled pork on them here. Noth­ing has changed since then except the share price. They were 1.65 on Sept 1. Today they are 1.77. Still the best-scor­ing large cap on our buy list though. 

And here’s my TikTok of the week.

CURRENT HOLDINGS & HISTORICAL TRADES

——————-

** Please remem­ber to review our Buy­ing Guide­lines to under­stand which cap bands you should be look­ing at and oth­er impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions.

DISCLOSURE

Please review our trad­ing and dis­clo­sure pol­i­cy.

FOR NEW MEMBERS

If you’re new to QAV Light, here’s a quick reminder on how it works.

1. We send you an email every Mon­day advis­ing which stocks we are adding to our Light port­fo­lio.
2. You can copy our trades, but please remem­ber to review our Trad­ing Guide­lines. And con­sult a finan­cial plan­ner before mak­ing any deci­sions.
3. We don’t rec­om­mend that you add stocks which are already in our port­fo­lio.
4. If one of the stocks we add breach­es one of our sell con­di­tions, we will sell it from our port­fo­lio and you’ll get an email advis­ing of the trade.
5. If you come across any QAV ter­mi­nol­o­gy that you don’t under­stand, please review our ter­mi­nol­o­gy guide or just email us for clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

That’s it for today!

If we decide to buy or sell some­thing, we’ll let you know.

Got a ques­tion?
[email protected]

——————-