Source : THE AGE NEWS
Congratulations are in order for Australians. Our median adult wealth has been ranked third globally – pipped at the post by only Luxembourg and Belgium, according to the UBS annual wealth report.
Helped by buoyant global sharemarkets and growth in house prices (which rose in 2025), the number of Australians with more than $US1 million ($1.45 million) in assets also grew by about 25,000 last year, to 1.6 million people, the Swiss bank said.
However, the 25,000 new Australians minted millionaires received no leg-up from the local sharemarket.
The performance of the Australian sharemarket tells a very different story, having squeezed out a disappointing gain of less than 2.8 per cent over the 2026 financial year to June 30. After accounting for inflation, the Australian market has gone backwards.
And compared with other major markets around the world, the performance of our listed stocks looks even more dire. The European STOXX 600 surged by almost 19 per cent over the past year, the US S&P 500 delivered a 20.8 per cent gain and its AI-heavy sibling the NASDAQ surged ahead by 28.7 per cent.
In Asia, China’s Shanghai Composite gained 18.8 per cent, and the notoriously frothy Korean KOSPI flew into the stratosphere – up 172 per cent over the year thanks to its heavy weighting to AI chip companies.
Given Australia’s ASX 200 index is heavily weighted by a few large companies and sectors, the key to outperformance (or avoiding underperformance) was firstly to hold the big mining companies (especially those with copper assets) like BHP and Rio Tinto or gold players like Newmont. The next trick was to shun Australian tech, particularly software stocks and two largest healthcare companies CSL and Cochlear. CSL, which has long been a favourite of retail investors, lost a very unhealthy 52 per cent over the past year while Cochlear fell by an even more anemic 59.6 per cent.
Meanwhile, success for bank investors was all about picking the right one. ANZ, which gained 16 per cent, was best in class, and Westpac was its only bank peer to finish the year in positive price territory. For Commonwealth Bank and National Australia investors, it was a year best forgotten.
With the value of hindsight or psychic powers, it was a curious rabble of lesser-known listed ASX 200 stocks that hit it out of the park.
But the stock performance honours go to 4D Medical – which is a software-based imaging company with proprietary technology that has not only gained US regulatory approval but has been adopted by a number of major US hospital clinics. From 25 cents a year ago to $6.80 a couple of months ago, it is now trading at $4.29 – which puts its yearly gain at about 1700 per cent, powering it from virtually unheard of to a market capitalisation of $2.6 billion.
That said, it still falls within the category of a volatile and speculative play. Most of the other members of the share price overachievers club fall into the speculative class.
Anyone who took a punt on Minerals 260 enjoyed the next largest percentage payday with this gold nickel and copper explorer, whose shares closed out the financial year up more than 500 per cent.
Coming in third place was our home-grown global defence and space technology company, specialising in counter-drone systems, Electro Optic Systems Holdings. Its shares have rocketed 277 per cent thanks largely to the elevated level of global conflict and militaries that are rapidly scaling up their anti-drone capabilities.
The remainder of those making the 20 best-performing shares is a smattering of lithium miners, critical minerals hopefuls, gold miners and copper producers – all future-facing materials feeding the technology revolution.
On the performance flipside, it is logistics software group Wisetech that scored the wooden spoon – depleting the fortunes of its investors to the tune of 70 per cent. It has clearly caught the anti-software virus that has spread around many of the world’s software companies.
But it has also been hit by governance concerns around its co-founder and executive chairman Richard White, whose personal behaviour has made him an unflattering human headline.
Concerns that AI will disrupt these business models also explains the poor performance outcomes for others in the worst share-price outcomes list, including Xero and Seek whose prices have collapsed 59 per cent and 44 per cent, respectively.
The Australian sharemarket performance is one that is worth forgetting, and to the extent it picks up in financial year 2027, it is the mining companies that are again expected to do all the heavy lifting.
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