Smarter Than Newton — QAV Weekly Update 2026-10-02

Hi QAVVERS,

It’s school hol­i­days and we did­n’t make it to Bundy, so I took a day off yes­ter­day to go with the fam­i­ly and some friends to Strad­broke Island. I’ve lived in Bris­bane for 18 years and this is only the third time I’ve made the effort to vis­it Strad­die. Pret­ty appalling effort! It’s real­ly beau­ti­ful over there. We should go at least once a year. Worth the two hour trip. We saw whales breach­ing and every­thing. My mate Alek­sei took his drone and cap­tured some cool whale footage as well as “cin­e­mat­ic” footage of Chris­sy and I prac­tis­ing our kung fu forms on the beach (I’ll spare you from hav­ing to see that).

This week I’ve been lis­ten­ing to Shostakovich’s 10th Sym­pho­ny. This is the one com­posed after Stal­in died in 1953 (the sec­ond move­ment, appar­ent­ly the “Stal­in” move­ment, is pret­ty famous) and that fea­tures a com­plete­ly bonkers, cod­ed obses­sive love let­ter to one of his for­mer stu­dents in the last two move­ments.

AUSTRALIAN MARKET UPDATE

The All Ordi­nar­ies fell around 2.3% over the week to close Thurs­day at 8,794.4:

• The RBA lift­ed its cash rate tar­get by 25 basis points to 4.60% on Tues­day 29 Sep­tem­ber, its fourth hike of 2026, cit­ing ele­vat­ed infla­tion and high­er glob­al ener­gy prices from the broad­en­ing Mid­dle East con­flict. The cash rate is now at its high­est lev­el since late 2011.

• August month­ly CPI showed head­line infla­tion up 4.0% year-on-year, while trimmed mean came in at 3.6% year-on-year, unchanged for a third straight month and frac­tion­al­ly cool­er than esti­mates. The soft­er infla­tion read gave investors brief breath­ing room on the rate tra­jec­to­ry, spark­ing a Wednes­day relief ral­ly.

• The ASX 200 dropped 174.9 points (-1.99%) to 8,614.4 on Thurs­day, its worst ses­sion since March, as high­er oil prices drove ris­ing bond yields glob­al­ly. Around 176 con­stituents (88%) fin­ished low­er, with only a hand­ful of resource, soft­ware and indus­tri­al names in pos­i­tive ter­ri­to­ry.

• Lynas Rare Earths agreed to acquire ASX-list­ed min­er Mete­oric Resources in a court-approved scheme of arrange­ment worth A$968 mil­lion, with the deal set to increase Lynas’s mea­sured and indi­cat­ed rare earth oxide min­er­al resources by around 79%. The deal implies a price of 28.6 cents per Mete­oric share, a 68.4% pre­mi­um to its last clos­ing price.

• Among the week’s notable indi­vid­ual movers, Lion­town Resources was the worst per­former on Thurs­day, falling 15.05% to 79 cents, while Lynas Rare Earths dropped 8.60% to $12.64.

US MARKET UPDATE

The S&P 500 fell 1.2% for the week end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, clos­ing at 7,651.54, its worst month since June:

• The Fed’s pre­ferred infla­tion gauge, the August PCE price index, came in at 3.4% head­line and 3.0% core, both well below esti­mates, and mar­kets priced in a low­er prob­a­bil­i­ty for an Octo­ber rate hike, shift­ing expec­ta­tions toward Decem­ber.

• The 10-year Trea­sury yield hit 5.30% and the 30-year rose to 5.65%, both reach­ing their high­est lev­els since 2002, keep­ing per­sis­tent pres­sure on equi­ties through the week.

• Micron (MU) report­ed Q4 2026 rev­enue of $54.23 bil­lion, up 379.3% year over year, beat­ing the $51.07 bil­lion con­sen­sus, with adjust­ed EPS of $33.42 against expec­ta­tions of $31.61. Despite the block­buster result, the stock failed to ral­ly, hav­ing already risen more than 200% year to date.

• Ele­vat­ed crude oil prices tied to ongo­ing US-Iran geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions con­tin­ued to push gov­ern­ment bond yields high­er through­out the week, weigh­ing on sen­ti­ment.

• For Sep­tem­ber over­all, the Dow fell 4.9%, the S&P 500 dropped 0.7%, while the Nas­daq man­aged a gain of 1.7%, with tech con­cen­tra­tion the key dif­fer­en­tia­tor in returns.

So, let’s get into my week­ly updates and see where we are at.

All the Best,
Cam

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QAV MYTH KILLERS

Smarter Than Newton

Read the full arti­cle →

STOCK ANALYSIS OF THE WEEK

Aus­tralian Mem­bers can check out the stocks we trad­ed in QAV Aus­tralian Light port­fo­lios this week.

Amer­i­can Mem­bers can check out the stocks we trad­ed in QAV Amer­i­can Light port­fo­lios this week.

Tony did a Pulled Pork on AIC Mines, a Queens­land cop­per pro­duc­er sit­ting on a fresh $120 mil­lion acqui­si­tion. Full details are in the pod­cast link below.

This week on the Amer­i­can show I did a deep dive on Caleres (CAL), a 148-year-old US shoe com­pa­ny whose brands run from Buster Brown all the way to Stu­art Weitz­man lux­u­ry boots. Check out the full episode at the link below.

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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.

AUSTRALIAN BUY LIST

QAV Val­ue Invest­ing Buy List (AU) 2026-09-26

U.S. BUY LIST

QAV Val­ue Invest­ing Buy List 2026-09-27

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PORTFOLIO PERFORMANCE

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 and see why an ama­teur active investor (who has a sys­tem to fol­low) can out-per­form most of the “pro­fes­sion­als”.

We pub­lish a fresh per­for­mance snap­shot once a month. Week­ly noise does­n’t tell you much in a val­ue-invest­ing sys­tem — what mat­ters is the trend. The end of Sep­tem­ber report will come out next week.

Sep­tem­ber 2026 per­for­mance snap­shot.

Aus­tralian Mod­el Port­fo­lio: No trades this week.

Amer­i­can Mod­el Port­fo­lio: No trades this week.

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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.

QAV LIGHT: Same des­ti­na­tion. You choose where you sit.

(Note: Amer­i­cans inter­est­ed in join­ing QAV Light or Club please go here instead.)

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Add QAV America — US stocks, the same QAV method

Already a QAV mem­ber? You can add QAV Amer­i­ca as your sec­ond mem­ber­ship at 50% off — US-list­ed stocks, the same QAV approach, billed in AUD through this site (just one pay­ment to keep an eye on). Add QAV Amer­i­ca →

Not a QAV mem­ber yet? Join QAV first, then you can add QAV Amer­i­ca at the 50% mem­ber rate.

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THIS WEEK’S EPISODES

Glob­al Con­se­quences: QAV AU #949

Glow With Pas­sion: QAV Amer­i­ca #72

STOCK NEWS AND UPDATES

COMMODITIES

This week the big changes to com­modi­ties were the fol­low­ing:

Com­mod­i­ty	Sta­tus
Plat­inum	JOSEPHINE

TerraCom Limited (ASX: TER) – Continuation of Suspension

The secu­ri­ties of Ter­ra­Com Lim­it­ed (‘TER’) were halt­ed at the request of TER on 28 Sep­tem­ber 2026 under
List­ing Rule 17.1, pend­ing the release of an announce­ment by TER regard­ing mate­r­i­al impair­ments to the
Com­pa­ny’s South African and Aus­tralian assets.

DISCLOSURE

Please review our trad­ing and dis­clo­sure pol­i­cy.

SIGNING OFF

SSDD!

• Cam

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That’s it for the week!

QAV A GOOD SHAREMARKET!

Got a ques­tion? [email protected]