ASIC alleges ASX misled the market for months on botched CHESS upgrade James Eyers and Elouise Fowler Aug 14, 2024 https://www.afr.com/companies/finan...itical-trading-system-upgrade-20240814-p5k27i The country’s sharemarket operator made misleading statements about how the overhaul of its clearing and settlement system was progressing months before it revealed the crucial upgrade was failing, the corporate regulator has alleged. The lawsuit in the Federal Court, filed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, is the first litigation against ASX for the botched upgrade of the post-trading platform. ASX faces a penalty that could be more than $500 million. The replacement of CHESS, as the clearing and settlement system is known, by blockchain technology was eventually abandoned. Work started on the project in 2015 and a more basic replacement is due in 2028 or 2029. Joe Longo, ASIC’s chairman, says ASX’s allegedly misleading comments lessened trust in the market operator. AAP Image ASIC has alleged that comments from ASX in February 2022 – that the CHESS project remained “on track for go-live” in April 2023 and was “progressing well” – were misleading. The regulator said this commentary suggested the ASX’s plan was on track, despite the exchange not having any basis to imply that this would be the case. The company only revealed that the project had unravelled in November 2022. Even then, ASX chairman Damian Roche, who has been in that role since April 2021, reassured a parliamentary committee that the exchange had not covered failures. Joe Longo, ASIC’s chairman, said the ASX statements in February 2022 went “to the heart of trust in the integrity of our markets”. “One doesn’t lightly go after the ASX,” he told The Australian Financial Review. “They are very serious proceedings … sending a very strong message to the market and ASX, that we will hold them accountable to what we consider were serious, material misstatements about the progress of a critical piece of infrastructure at that time.” “The ASIC expects [ASX] to continue to uphold the standards of the market that they themselves are applying to everyone else, and so we will continue to hold them accountable for those standards.” ASIC alleges that, contrary to ASX statements, the CHESS replacement program was not going well by February 2022. The delay and subsequent pause of the project in November that year caused significant cost to ASX and market participants who relied on assurances about the project and scheduled go-live date, the regulator said. ‘Collective failure’ The action comes two days before ASX releases its full-year results, where the costs of compliance and ongoing technology upgrades will remain a focus. The CHESS bungle triggered a $250 million write-down and set upgrade back at least five years. “We recognise the significance and serious nature of these proceedings. We cooperated fully with ASIC’s investigation and are now carefully reviewing and considering the allegations,” said ASX chief executive Helen Lofthouse. ASX said it will keep the market informed about the case in accordance with its continuous disclosure obligations. “We play a critical role at the centre of Australia’s financial markets, and continue to focus on supporting and delivering for customers,” said Ms Lofthouse. “We are committed to taking ASX forward, and have made strong progress as an organisation over the past two years.” Mr Longo said he still had faith in the ASX to uphold market integrity and to deliver the new CHESS project, despite the court action. “We don’t think these proceedings are going to distract or undermine ASX’s CHESS replacement efforts,” he said. ASIC’s action has been taken against the company, rather than directors. ASIC deputy chairwoman Sarah Court said ASIC didn’t have the evidence to pin individual liability on directors, following an extensive 15-month investigation. “What we’re saying is you can’t sheet home responsibility to one or two or three individuals,” she said. “This is a collective failure of the board and senior executive team .... We see this as a collective failure, and the appropriate person to hold to account is the ASX itself.” A devastating report from Accenture, released the same day in November that the ASX came clean about the project’s problems, identified issues including uncertain timelines, excessive complexity and communication issues with Digital Asset, the firm developing the technology. It found only 62 per cent of the software had been delivered, despite assurances from executives that the project had moved into the implementation phase. At the time, Mr Longo said it was “unsatisfactory” that Accenture’s findings had been made at such a late stage of the project – which had already been delayed five times – undermining confidence in ASX. Mr Longo also raised concerns about the briefings provided to him by ASX. “There was, frankly, a disclosure question, I suppose, as to whether we were being informed in a timely and accurate manner,” he said then. “That also goes to whether there was a sufficient level of governance and oversight in ASX at the highest level to be sufficiently informed about what the actual progress was [compared to] what they would have liked it to be.” The action is the second against ASX this year. In a separate case in March, the corporate regulator pursued the exchange over 8417 rule breaches following an “order information transparency failure” unrelated to CHESS. ASIC found a breach of integrity rules supporting liquidity and reliability across markets, triggering a $1.05 million fine. ASIC has also required ASX to commission several special reports to audit its governance processes, and has strengthened licensing conditions.
Should be good for the ASX then. If the US ETF EWA is a good representation of the ASX then the market is basically Banking+Housing+Mining so higher commodity prices & higher long term rates means the ASX rises.
EWA, yeah never looked at that one, personally I don't care too much for the overall ASX Mkt as it is lead by the banks and other non inspiring stocks. For example BHP is a pretty lacklustre performer and suffers greatly from volatility. The weak AUD is good for our exports and gold has been stellar lately. I just keep looking at what will rotate next. Copper looks like one commodity, battery metals and rare earths (correlated) are bottoming imo. Nickel is buggered by Indonesia as Nickel can be considered a battery metal. Also used in steel alloys though. Uranium was hammered hard, prolly near bottom on that too imo. Graphite stocks another one to watch. Defense stocks, there's one here called Drone Shield, it's doing ok.
Personal choice, some ETF's are beauties, others not so, you've kind of got to compare them, for example (going from memory as I'm in bed atm) CPER ETF (copper physical) is doing very well while COPEX (copper miners) and some of the miners are laggards. Where my wife in particular is having huge success, she's concentrating on Gold mining explorers who are transitioning into imminent producers. Producers are doing better than explorers as a whole.
I noticed this a few months ago, the physical gold ETFs were doing better than the gold miners ETFs. This I think because miners have huge costs running a mine.
Another sector, not so obvious, is China stocks going gangbusters. For those inclined using ETF's. Weekly chart FXI on the NYSE. IZZ.AX on ASX Exchange, weekly chart
This 5-minute test promises to make you a better investor It’s never been easier to get a “money personality” assessment that offers to unlock your personal investing secrets. But are they worth it? Andrew Hobbs Wealth reporter Mar 31, 2025 https://www.afr.com/wealth/investin...to-make-you-a-better-investor-20240516-p5jebh If knowledge is power, surely knowledge about what motivates you to invest, save and spend your money is knowledge that will help you make better decisions? That’s certainly what’s driving the push by everyone from financial planners to fintechs to use money personality assessments to uncover clients’ money-related proclivities. But can a test that takes less than five minutes really provide any useful insights? There are nine types of investor. Which are you? Bethany Rae Certainly, says Vince Scully, the founder of online financial advice business Life Sherpa. He gets every one of his clients to do a short quiz to assess their money personality before he takes them on. “We have tens of thousands of results that show it correlates very highly with how people behave and we use that to inform how to deliver advice as well using it to supplement the traditional risk score analysis,” Scully says. “The report divides people into nine personalities and says, ‘Here’s what that means for why you do what you do with money and here’s how you can work with your strengths and weaknesses.’ None of these personalities are better or worse than the others, and it just means you do things differently.” The nine types of investor Achiever An achiever attributes financial success to their skills and abilities and their failures to not trying hard enough. They are confident money managers but do not feel comfortable unless they have thoroughly reviewed the facts. They are also the most confident and proudest of the Moneymax groups. High roller These investors enjoy making a statement with their money. But if there is a mismatch between what they earn and what they spend, problems can arise. They are the highest risk takers. Entrepreneurs These people earn the most of all the financial groups but they do not consider themselves as successful as they would like to be. They are happy to delegate money management to someone they trust and believe that luck will be on their side in attaining their financial goals. They enjoy the feeling of prestige and fame associated with having financial status and power. Optimists These investors are more interested in enjoying money rather than making it grow because they find it all too stressful. They can be complacent, but some people call that blind bliss. They are living proof that it takes more than just having money to enjoy it; it takes the expectation and the inclination to enjoy it. Hunters Hunters are highly successful in their career but do not always apply that accomplishment to their finances. Money is important to them because they enjoy expressing themselves and their emotions with it. But to be successful they must transform some of those expressions into healthier attitudes and behaviours. Perfectionists These investors can avoid making financial decisions because they are so afraid of making a mistake. They can have a pent-up desire to relate to their money differently. They want to believe that they can attain financial freedom without struggle, but it is hard. Safety players These people put themselves in a sea of indifference about their finances because while they don’t want to manage their own finances and would like to have someone they trust manage it, they actually don’t trust anyone else. And while their investment style is safe and secure, it does not bring contentment. Producers Producers believe in hard work but are disappointed with the financial reward from that, and they never really feel they have control over their money. They have to make a commitment to themselves to fill the gap between where they are now and where they want to be. Money masters These are the queens of investing. They know “how to blend money throughout life so that it complements and enhances personal fulfillment”. A money master is “a front-runner in all money arenas – earning it, investing it, accumulating it, enjoying it, and allowing it to provide personal freedom and contentment”. Source: Dr Kathleen Gurney’s Your Money Personality A person’s “money personality” or whatever category an investor might be labelled as comes down to behavioural trends, traits, patterns, attitudes, and emotional and psychological responses towards money, says Shumi Akhtar, an associate professor at the University of Sydney Business School. The better quizzes will, in effect, be personality tests based firmly on psychological research. They might be built on the same intellectual structure as the Myers-Briggs personality tests used by recruiters (and quite possibly the firm you work at) to assess their staff. Those tests in turn draw on research pioneered by the psychotherapist Carl Jung. He divided people into five big personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. “Those five personalities seek different rewards in investment,” says Andrew Inwood, the founder of financial research company CoreData Group. Those traits translate directly into investment behaviour, according to research published in the Journal of Financial Economics in 2024. Shumi Akhtar, of the University of Sydney. Academics Zhengyang Jiang, Cameron Peng and Hongjun Yan surveyed thousands of affluent Americans to examine how personality traits affect financial decision-making, including portfolio asset allocation. “Neuroticism stands out: investors high in neuroticism are more pessimistic about average future stock returns and assign a greater probability to a crash,” the paper says. “They are also more pessimistic about future economic growth and expect higher inflation.” The academics also found personality traits are related to risk preferences and that some investors are heavily influenced by people in their social circles. “Those who score high on neuroticism and extraversion are more likely to adopt a certain investment when it becomes popular among people around them,” the paper says. “These psychology-based concepts can potentially provide new ways to measure and demonstrate the forces behind investment decisions above and beyond the traditional measures in economics.” Finding out what motivates investment decisions by their customers is useful for superannuation funds because it helps drive the kinds of investment products they offer. Most money or investor personality quizzes test the extent to which a person is prone to certain biases or shortcuts in their thinking, says Janneke Blijlevens, a marketing academic with a background in cognitive psychology, design and business at Melbourne’s RMIT. The test Life Sherpa uses is the Money Max quiz. It is based on research by Dr Kathleen Gurney, a pioneer in psychology and investing, and author of Your Money Personality. Vince Scully, founder of Life Sherpa. Michael Quelch The nine personalities in Money Max are: high rollers, optimists, entrepreneurs, hunters, perfectionists, safety players, achievers, money masters and producers. You can find it here. It turns out, I’m an achiever. That’s someone who likes being in charge of their money and making their own financial decisions. A less polite term for it would be control freak. “The achiever is simply in control of his money and happiest when making his own wise financial decisions. Value is important to the achiever,” my test result says. I certainly liked that “wise” bit, and the bit about value could not have been more correct. My investments are all about value, very rarely growth (which hasn’t been so great these past two years). And I’m certainly not a high roller – they are the highest risk-takers, according to Gurney’s book. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are happy to delegate money management to someone they trust and “believe that good luck will be on their side in attaining their financial goals, [and] enjoy the feeling of prestige and fame associated with having financial status and power”. Optimists are more interested in enjoying money rather than making it grow because they find it all too stressful. Hunters, Gurney says in her book “are highly educated, are successful in a professional career, yet you don’t always acknowledge your abilities and assets and apply them to your money”. Perfectionists can avoid making financial decisions because they are so afraid of making a mistake. Safety players can put themselves in a sea of indifference about their finances because while they don’t want to manage their own finances and would like to have someone they trust manage their money. “They basically don’t trust anyone else.” Producers believe in hard work but are disappointed with the financial reward from that, and they never really feel they have control over their money. Money masters, however, are the queens of investing. They know “how to blend money throughout life so that it complements and enhances personal fulfilment,” Gurney says. While summing those traits up in a few lines is a bit glib – Gurney has a whole book unpacking what makes them each tick – it’s still probably more useful than the equally entertaining quiz I did on the InvestSmart website. That quiz gave me a complete financial plan and a portal to start investing with their exchange-traded funds – just for the price of my email address! That felt much more like a basic sales tool wrapped up in an old Cosmopolitan magazine-style quiz. “What these quizzes do is help you identify and become aware of what thought processes may be influencing your decision-making,” says RMIT’s Blijlevens. But if you were hoping the quiz would make you a “better” investor, think again, she says, because a quiz won’t normally help you change your behaviour (damn you, magnificent seven!). “Just knowing what you should do, and what the better choice is, is not enough to change behaviour. Money/investor personality quizzes do not provide you with a motivation to change.” So while they help give an individual greater awareness of how they behave, they don’t provide an insight into why they behave that way or help change adverse behaviour. “This is not to say that an investor quiz cannot be an important first step in the journey of behaviour change,” says Blijlevens. “Behaviour change starts with awareness.” Akhtar, whose areas of expertise include behavioural finance, superannuation and governance, says the real benefit of such quizzes comes down to whether they help improve a person’s financial literacy. “A very basic understanding of risk and return can take someone a long way,” she says. “Money personality quizzes can also be beneficial if they include a holistic view rather than just ‘money’. Money plays a very important role in life, but that cannot be the end game.” That’s a sentiment echoed by financial planner Colin Benvenuto. “Ultimately, we are not trying to assess client investment personalities so that we can give one client concentrated ‘trading like’ or ‘growth’ portfolios and another ‘passive’ or ‘value’ type investment portfolios. Our clients are looking for our advice for them,” says Benvenuto, who works at Emerge Financial Sydney. “We gain our best understanding of the client through discussion. I focus on really getting to know them, what is important to them in life and what they are wanting their personal financial planning to support. You do achieve a close understanding of the client and their overall profile and personality of course but it’s achieved through personal relationship and trust.”