On Tuesday the 11^th of August, FAWA and the UWA Business School Young Alumni Network hosted their first collaboration networking event, Breaking into Business. Held at Wolf Lane, the night saw a mix of current students, UWA Business school alumni and sponsor representatives come together to network with and learn from each other.

The night included guest speaker Simon Edmonds, a former UWA Business School student and current young alumni who presently works at Wesfarmers. Simon spoke about his career development, from graduating from UWA, completing his Chartered Financial Analyst, and now preparing to leave for the US to commence his MBA at Harvard Business School in 2016. He looked into this progression of roles within Wesfarmers, including working in the Business Development team, as aide to Managing Director Richard Goyder, and his current role in Investor Relations and Planning.

Breaking into Business was a huge success, and we look forward to future collaboration between FAWA and the Young Alumni Network.

At the beginning of the year many market experts expected gold to increase in value given the uncertainty in Europe and China. However, as always gold moves inversely with the state of the US economy. The continued growth of the US economy coupled with the possibility of Federal reserve rising interest rates has seen gold (XAU) decline to its lowest levels in six years. Now Deutsche bank predicts that the fair value of gold is $750 (currently trading at $1100) with only falling oil prices providing support to its price. It remains to be seen just how low the gold price can go.

Find out all the reasons for Deutsche's prediction by reading the full article here. 

The Shanghai Composite Index more than doubled since last year, driven by anticipation of growing economy, over-use of margin lending, and the heavy government support. However, it was irrational to expect the market to continue endlessly moving especially with mind blowing valuations compared by many to those during the dot-com bubble. As the market began to slide the Chinese retail investors that make up the majority of the traded volume began to exit in anticipation of further declines, unwinding heavily leveraged positions in the process. Even though the Chinese government massively interfered to boost the prices, the market fell by more than 30% in the space of one month. The recent slowdown in the Chinese economy creates a clear question: has China's stock market euphoria ended?

Click here to read the full article.

Once again Greece is close to exiting the euro. The ECB froze its Emergency Liquidity Assistance to Greek banks due to the overwhelming volume of withdrawals. The market now prices the chance of Greek  default at 94%. In an attempt at preventing the collapse of its financial system the Greek government has imposed capital controls including closing banks and limiting daily withdrawals to $60 euros. The referendum, set to take place on the 6th of July, will undoubtedly decide the future of Greece for generations to come.

Click here to read the full article.

China recently stated its intention to assist Brazil iron ore giant Vale invest in ships that can transport high-quality ore from Brazil to North Asia. The deal will see China invest up to $US4 billion and is expected to lead to further weakening of the iron ore price, putting greater pressure on struggling Fortescue Metals Group.

Currently, Andrew Forrest's company is the world's fourth lowest cost exporter of iron ore. Vale, on the other hand, produces some of the lowest cost iron ore globally. Historically, freight has made made Vale's ore relatively expensive compared to BHP and Rio's product. It remains to be seen if Vale's gain will result in Australia's loss.

The article below provides full commentary about China's investment in Vale's iron ore expansion.

Clear here to read the full article.