I just told a friend of mine I’m selling my house in spring. I’ve been thinking to move to Queensland.

My friend, a Queenslander, happens to be in real estate.

“Why wait until spring?” he said. “Prices will keep moving up here.”

He’s not wrong.

We can say that with a whole lot of confidence because mortgage loans are on the march.

Australian Finance Group ($AFG) is deep in the lending game. They just released their latest quarterly guidance on the market.

What do they say?

They just had their biggest quarter…on record!

AFG has been around a long time.

In the last financial year, they lodged $100 billion in loans.

What’s most interesting to me is AFG say that investors are back in a big way.

In fact, they haven’t been as this high, as a percentage, since 2017.

That date sticks out at me.

2017 was the first peak in the housing boom that kicked off from about 2013.

It was getting so hot that APRA stepped in to cool it off. They restricted ‘interest only’ loans.

We can also see why the stock market didn’t react much to the RBA holding rates steady last meeting.

Everyone expects rates to go down. It’s just a question of when.

AFG has more to share. Fixed rate loans, and refinancings, are withering away as the market positions for more rate cuts.

This is what you and I want to see as investors.

Rising house prices, rightly or wrongly, signal economic strength to the average punter.

It’s going to make them more likely to spend, invest…and get comfortable with the world today.

We’re much more likely to see a rip roaring run in the share market if people think they’re on solid economic ground.

Nobody throws their money in the market in a big way if they think the housing market is going to dive on them.

Yes…

All the ingredients we need to see for a big, burly, reckless bull run keep coming together.

We have rising house prices…we have rate cut expectations…we have strong employment…and we have the stock market, in general, at all time highs.

You might be put off by the fact that the stock market is trading at a high valuation.

Don’t be – at least in my opinion.

While it may be true that the ASX/200 is up in fresh air, not every part of the market is.

Junior miners, for one, are way off their highs. The big cap miners have plenty more work to do too.

And my sector, the small caps, are not at all time highs either.

I saw a comment that’s applicable here, a while ago.

People have rightly forgotten what a small cap bull market is REALLY like.

It’s been a long time since the heady days of late 2020…when small caps were surging like nothing I’ve ever seen.

Let me reminisce…

Small caps were soaring. Big gains were a weekly event at times. Business mistakes were barely punished. It was a money maker’s dream period.

We all looked smarter, including me.

It couldn’t last.

The world went pear shaped from 2022…and small caps went into a “winter”, as harsh as I’ve ever seen. That was 2023.

It’s only now they’re really coming into their own “premiership window”.

I like to track various fund managers and strategies.

It seems to me that those that posted big returns in the last 12 months (15%-25%) were more likely to be in the small cap space than not.

That’s why small caps can be so compelling. They really can juice your returns in a powerful way.

I’m not saying they’re without risk. Nothing in the market ever is.

But I urge you to tune into signals like AFG. It’s a bull run happening, and they don’t last forever.

Get involved here.

Best wishes,

Callum Newman,
Editor, Small-Cap Systems and Australian Small-Cap Investigator

Murray’s Chart of the Day –
Silver

By Murray Dawes, Monday, 14 July 2025

As predicted, the breakout in the silver price above US$35.00 is seeing a strong rally unfold. My target is the sell zone of a long-term range that silver has been trading in for the past fifteen years.

The sell zone is between US$40.00-45.00.

That doesn’t mean I think the bull market will end in that range.

It just means there is no resistance on the charts until the price enters that range.

The long-term trend remains up, so we may see silver slice through the sell zone like butter and continue advancing towards the all-time high near US$50.00.

Momentum is strong and there is plenty of catch up for silver to do to realign itself with gold. So grab your popcorn and your favourite silver stocks and join in the fun.

Regards,

Murray Dawes,
Editor, Retirement Trader and Fat Tail Microcaps