The A$335 billion ($223 billion) fund has started the new financial year 3% overweight in stocks. AustralianSuper has moved money from its fixed interest and cash portfolios to expand its global and domestic equities allocation to about 57.5% of its portfolio, a position it expects to maintain or 'possibly' increase, Chief Investment Officer Mark Delaney said in an interview. Delaney ' like other large investors ' has benefited from exposure to the 'Magnificent Seven' mega caps. He likened the current tech boom to other periods of innovation such as the introduction of computing, the internet and mobile phones, that would run for 5 to 10 years in three phases. He also anticipates that the US Federal Reserve will cut interest rates, giving stocks additional support. AustralianSuper's balanced option, where 90% of members have their retirement savings invested, returned 8.5% for the financial year. The high growth option delivered 10.2%. Rival Australian Retirement Trust, the nation's second-largest fund with A$285 billion, returned 11.3% for its high growth option. The broader industry has returned 8.8% for the financial year, according to research house SuperRatings....

Anyone who is fortunate enough to have a bit of spare cash can consult the financial pages, pick specific companies to invest in and buy shares in certain companies with the hope that their value will increase. It's an enticing way to generate returns that outpace inflation. But that dynamic has changed in the past few decades, with fewer companies choosing to list their shares on stock exchanges, and make them available to a wide audience. This shift means savers have fewer options to choose from, and risk losing out on opportunities to invest in some of the world's most innovative and fastest growing companies. There's been a net reduction of $120 billion in public equities this year, according to JPMorgan analysts, a figure that dwarfs last year's $40bn decrease and marks the third consecutive year of decline. JPMorgan's data suggests persistent uncertainty among companies worldwide. Share buybacks ' when companies repurchase their own shares from shareholders in the market ' have stayed stable, while share offerings have fallen, meaning there are fewer shares available overall....

The startup is aimed at Turkey's retail investor market and claims to have more than 2 million users. Its pitch is that it charges significantly lower transaction and commission fees for Turkish customers who want to invest in U.S. or Turkish stocks. It also offers financial content, real-time stock market data and news, and company profiles ' all to educate what many consider to be somewhat of an emerging market. 'If you came to Turkey three years ago, there were only 1.5 million investors. That's in a country of 80 million,' Egem Eraslan, CEO and founder of Midas, told TechCrunch. 'Capital markets' penetration rates were very, very low. Mobile banking in Turkey is very good and widespread, but there was a lack of investment in equities products because of a lack of infrastructure.' According to Eraslan, Midas managed to change that dynamic by building its own infrastructure and providing a decent user experience. 'We were extremely capital-efficient. We built much of the initial infrastructure product and licensing with less than $500,000, and that allowed us to launch, get traction, raise capital and break that deadlock. We might be the only new broker in the world that launched self-clearing, self-custody and self-execution.'...

There were an estimated 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million deaths in 2022, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Around a fifth of people develop cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 9 men and 1 in 12 women die from the disease. Rio de Janeiro has declared a public health emergency as cases of dengue fever spiked days ahead of Carnival celebrations across Brazil. Authorities announced the move to contain the mosquito-borne epidemic, which has already led to more than 11, 000 cases in Rio in 2024, compared to nearly 23,000 for the whole of 2023. AI can improve the accuracy of doctors' diagnoses of skin disease but does not necessarily compensate for bias, research published in Nature Medicine shows. Doctors remain less likely to correctly identify skin diseases on non-white skin even with the assistance of AI, the authors say. Another study, featured in Nature Aging, has identified over 1,400 blood proteins that may predict several forms of dementia a decade before diagnosis, Reuters reports. Scientists from the UK and China, who analyzed more than 50,000 samples, say the results show promise for earlier patient identification to advance treatment research....