Equities

While California and Scandinavia tend to get top billing in tech, the Land Down Under now boasts one of the fastest-growing software and fintech hubs in the world.

Australia’s Olympians took home 19 medals in swimming at the Paris games, but the Land Down Under is also making waves in other arenas: software and fintech.

Australia’s tech industry, which expanded 80% between 2016 and 2021, is projected to reach $167 billion AUD by 2030 ($112 billion USD) as global software and fintech firms continue to spring up across the continent.¹

The digital policy trail indicates important shifts in policy emphasis—and resulting investment takeaways.

Last month, China held its latest “third plenary” meeting for 2024, setting long-term strategic priorities with the potential to shape China’s economy and equity markets. Drawing on large language models and proprietary policy data capabilities,¹ we took the opportunity to identify potential investable equity themes from the “digital trail” tied to the meeting, progress in policy execution and new measures:

New Productivity, Quality

The recent global IT outage underscores the abiding importance of the software sector—and the potentially attractive opportunities within it.

On July 19, CrowdStrike, an American cybersecurity company, botched a software update and triggered a massive IT outage that turned computer screens blue around the globe. Roughly 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices were affected, and within several days more than 7,000 flights were canceled or delayed, health services were interrupted, and payment systems came to a standstill, resulting in at least $5.4 billion in direct losses for Fortune 500 companies...