Year of heroes, villains

GOOD evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fogey Awards for 2014 - celebrating the characters who’ve managed to put a bit of sauce into the all-too-often sensible world of investing.

06/02/2009 BUSINESS: Scott Pape. The Barefoot Investor. HWT staff.

GOOD evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fogey Awards for 2014 — the ninth edition of the annual awards celebrating the characters who’ve managed to put a bit of sauce into the all-too-often sensible world of investing.

For the uninitiated, the Fogeys was born partly out of television’s night of nights, the Logies, and partly out of superannuation, which looks after old fogeys (and us financial types) to the tune of $80 million a day.

Before we commence the formal part of the evening, there are a few housekeeping matters to attend to.

The toilets are located at the back of the room, right next to the table where the three independents who held the balance of power in the last parliament are sitting — thingamabob, whatshisname … and that other bloke.

Your entrees are currently being served — and I see that Clive Palmer is already head down into the chicken wings.

With the recent ABC cuts, the main course tonight will be Peppa Pig, followed by a dessert of Bananas in Pyjamas.

Our after-dinner speaker was supposed to be Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street, but the lying thief cancelled at the last minute.

Thankfully we’ve secured another lying thief to take his place — the Prostitute of Politics, Mr Craig Thomson.

Now, without further ado, let’s get on to the awards for 2014.

 

THE METAMUCIL AWARD

TONIGHT the Fogeys has a new sponsor — Metamucil — and the worthy winner of this award is Joe Hockey. (Have you seen pictures of him lately? He even looks constipated: furrowed brow, squinting eyes, and beads of sweat on his upper lip.)

Joe’s got a legislative backlog he just can’t pass.

With the price of iron ore collapsing faster than his credibility, the mid-year Budget update revealed that the deficit has blown out by a further $10.6 billion.

It’s a far cry from the free-flowing days of 2012 when he purred to punters that he’d generate “a surplus in our first year in office and a surplus for every year in our first term”.

 

BEST ACTION ADVENTURE

GREAT action movies have a few things in common: a hero, a villain, warships, and an over-the-top script that has you guessing to the end.

This year’s blockbuster involved a prickly little Russian tyrant heading to an exotic locale (OK, Brisbane) to counter a bloke in budgie-smugglers.

But it was a dud — Tony did what he’s been doing for his entire prime ministership: not much.

And so our villain rides barechested into the sunset ... and yet, when he least expects it, he gets shirtfronted by his own currency.

Russia is the world’s biggest oil producer, so the price slide has smashed them.

The Ruskies are gallantly defending the rouble, hiking rates by 6.5 per cent in a day (now at 17 per cent). They have no choice — they’re in a fully fledged crisis, and they know how it ends.

In 1998 the rouble lost 75 per cent of its value in just three weeks, causing normally reserved Russians to riot.

So let’s all raise a shot of vodka (or three) to our mates in Moscow.

 

BOX OFFICE BOMB

WITH the share market basically flat, the average super fund is on track for a modest 5 to 8 per cent return for the year. (We’re glad someone was modest — because the $20 billion the industry trousered in fees certainly wasn’t).

However, just like our disclosure documents, the year of the yawn hid some absolute clunkers: with the price of iron ore hitting new lows, our miners were about as popular with investors as Malcolm Turnbull at an ABC Christmas party.

Fortescue Metals was the dog with the most fleas, dropping by more than half this year. Despite tech stocks continuing to hit new highs, there was a touch of MySpace to Freelancer.com, which is down 60 per cent this year.

And for all the hype and hope, cryptocurrency Bitcoin was crowned the “worst US investment of 2014”, having dropped 52 per cent against the US dollar.

Yet there can only be one winner, and that must go to Vocation Limited, a company that fed off the Victorian Government’s experiment of rogering the TAFE system.

When Spring Street pulled $20 million of funding, the company was a little late in handing in its homework.

Investors gave the company an F for continuous disclosure — and marked the stock down by about 90 per cent this year.

 

BEST ACTOR

MATHIAS “The Cormannator” Cormann gets the gong for Best Actor. Like Arnie, Comrade Cormann likes nothing better than lighting up a stogie and doing the impossible: flogging a second-hand insurance company for a couple of billion more than it’s worth, pulverising his political opponents by labelling them “economic girlie men”, or flexing his legislative lats on the financial advice laws, leaving consumers worse off.

 

SILVER FOGEY

THE Silver Fogey (otherwise known as the Georgie Parker Award) goes to the sinking Aussie dollar, which has had worse press than Miley Cyrus this year.

Most of it has been leaked by Reserve Bank boss Glenn Stevens, who wants to ruin your holiday plans by seeing the dollar back at the long-term average of US75c.

 

GOLD FOGEY

AND to present the Gold Fogey, I’d like to invite the good doctor, Geoffrey Edelsten (and his busty Brynne 2.0), to the stage.

It’s wonderful to see that age, bankruptcy (again), jail, public humiliation and being forced to hit up his 91-year old mum for money haven’t deterred him.

And the winner of the Gold Fogey for 2014 is … oil.

The price of petrol has dropped a lot (yay!), which means the price of plane tickets will also drop, though it’ll cost you more when you get there (boo!).

Yet it could be more serious. Few market watchers predicted the oil price would fall by so much.

It’s worrying, because part of it’s due to lower demand from the Middle Kingdom.

That’s why global markets now resemble a line of soccer players in the wall defending a free kick — closing their eyes, jumping in the air and protecting their privates.

We don’t know whether the economic death-ball will hit the back of the net, but we know one thing: it’s sure to provide more financial frivolity for next year’s mega-celebration, the 10th Fogeys.

So, until next year, have a safe and merry Christmas.

Tread Your Own Path!

Originally published as Year of heroes, villains