Tim Treadgold

Quiz time: What does the mining industry want, but can’t get, and the wine industry has, but wants to give back?

Tell a boy (of any age) to not do something and everyone knows the result. He does it, whether he’s a boy of five or 55.

Curious things have happened in Perth in recent weeks. The most interesting is the boom in uranium shares.

Australia’s two-speed economy, which has the resource-rich states of Western Australia and Queensland, dramatically outperforming the southern manufacturing states, has just got w

The ‘what if’ question posed last week is entertaining people in places far higher than that occupied by Briefcase.

Economists are born pessimists. That’s why some of them are warning that the boom times being generated by China’s demand for commodities will not last.

On March 16 last year, someone paid $5.50 for a parcel of shares in Fortescue Metals Group. It was the peak price on the day.

Are Australia’s major goldminers profitable, or not?

Oh dear. It looks like we’ve inherited a premier who is having big ideas and wants to do things, a very dangerous combination.

Hands up anyone who expects the stock market to rise between now and Christmas?

It’s not often you can easily pick the best or worst investment on the stock market. Right now, however, the worst stands out like sore thumb.

Australia’s great grape glut is causing wine producers no end of pain. But in Western Australia there seems to be a variation emerging on that theme – the great grape shortage.

If a man in a pub offered to sell you the Sydney Harbour Bridge for $50,000, would you write out a cheque on the spot?

Steel, in case hot-headed speculators playing the Australian stock market had not noticed, is essentially made by blending two materials – iron ore and coal, with a bit of limestone tossed in, plus nickel and other stuff for speciality steels.

It's difficult for young investors to see financial booms as the events that sow the seeds of financial busts.

‘Everyone makes money in a boom’ and ‘every deal is a winner’ are statements that ought to be consigned to that list of other great lies, such as the ‘cheque is in the mail’ – a point that close observers of the deals of 2005 will have noted.

‘Unintended consequences’ is one of those marvellous expressions which, when translated, simply means we have no idea what will happen after we change the rules.

Buying local is a good thing when shopping for fruit and vegetables, but not necessarily a wise investment policy.

In the future, probably closer to the year 2020 than today, there might be an iron ore mine on the Shovelanna tenement co-worked by a small company called Cazaly Resources.

Some Perth investors with an eye on BHP Billiton will be hoping for an insight into the company when they toddle along to its annual meeting in Perth tomorrow (Friday November 25)

It's a shame that Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay are not writing any more of their Yes Minister books.

To list, or not to list? That is the question facing Australian resource company executives as they contemplate doing business in the capital of mining finance, London.

Peak Oil is a hot topic in the petroleum business, and one that worries government because of the pain being felt at the bowser by voters.

TAKING the moral high ground can be a very expensive business, as the innocent small shareholders of Consolidated Minerals are discovering.

What's wrong with this equation?

Big fish in Perth’s small corporate pond pay a high price when they move to deeper waters.

Every speculator dreams of a 10-bagger, that legendary stock market winner that delivers a profit of 10 times the outlay.

It's not every day that a new, and successful, investment theory emerges.

THE experts say that a glass (or two) of wine a day is good for your health.

A funny thing happened on the stock market last week at the height of the confusion about the sale (or not) of the Government’s outstanding 51 per cent stake in Telstra.

It's a brave or foolish man prepared to criticise, however mildly, a company that has just reported the biggest profit in Australian business history.