This week’s best investing insights

Our top investing insights from this week.

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Shani Jayamanne is a Senior Investment Specialist, Morningstar Australia.

More and more wills are being contested, which means that the will you set out might not be the will that gets executed. Shani consulted Abbey John from Partners Legal Solutions for tips on how to make your will as airtight as possible.

Many Australians consider investment properties in addition to, or even instead of, investing in equities. Shani collected our best resources on property investing here.

In the latest episode of the Investing Compass podcast Shani and Mark discussed lessons from Dollarmites, CommBank’s savings program for school children. 

Read more of Shani’s articles.

Joseph Taylor is an Associate Investment Specialist, Morningstar Australia.

The reason we recommend setting a clear goal for your investments is that it helps you find the most suitable investments for the job.

If your goal to is to build a certain amount of passive income, for example, you might look for quality dividend stocks that are able to grow the dividends they pay out. Joseph screened for what could be the ASX’s top 8 dividend stocks meeting this criteria.

While there were eight of them at the time of writing, one of those companies – TPG Telecom – had its Narrow Moat rating removed later in the week. Simonelle Mody wrote about TPG’s downgrade here.

As shareholders we entrust the investment of a company’s cash to management. As a result, the quality of a management team’s capital allocation over time can have a profound impact on the returns achieved by investors. Joseph explored some of the reasons our analysts have assigned companies a Capital Allocation rating of Poor in the past.

Joseph recently re-read David Dreman’s book Contrarian Investment Strategies and wrote about it here. Last week, he highlighted two more stocks that might fit Dreman’s approach and are also cheap according to our analysts.

Read more of Joseph’s articles.

Mark LaMonica, CFA is Director of Personal Finance, Morningstar Australia.

While they might chart different routes there, most investors have a shared goal: financial independence. Mark shared a checklist for financial independence here.

For decades, owning a house has been viewed as key building block of building wealth. Mark is a renter and, as he has written previously, is happy renting for life. Here is his guide to building wealth and financial security without buying your home.

Read more of Mark’s articles.

More content from Morningstar this week