The top 10 motivators for Australian investors
As wages continue to stagnate, investors are turning to shares in order to fund plans for property, travel and self-funded retirement
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Less work and more play are key themes revealed in new research showcasing the 10 biggest motivations for Australians to invest their hard-earned money in assets such as shares and property.
Online trading platform Stake surveyed more than 2,000 Australian investors and found the biggest motivation to invest was a self-funded retirement in which people could live off their investments. The second biggest motivation was supplementing salaries with investment income, reflecting a separate finding that investors feel slow wage growth is a key barrier to reaching their financial goals.
Cutting back on working hours was another motivator, perhaps reflecting the mindset of 46 percent of respondents who said asset ownership was a more effective means of building wealth than how hard they worked in today’s economy.
“While trends such as ‘quiet quitting’ may have drawn criticism, they could reflect a feeling that work is just not compensating people as they need,” according to the report.
Almost one in five survey respondents expected no pay rise over the next 12 months, reflecting the likelihood that higher-for-longer interest rates will eventually lead to a weaker jobs market. The latest data showed a slight uptick in unemployment to 4.1 percent in June.
Homeownership was another reason prompting Australians to invest spare money in the share market or other asset classes to generate additional income or capital gains. The ‘deposit hurdle’ remains a key challenge for first home buyers, particularly as home values continue to rise at a faster rate than wages. In FY24, the median Australian home price rose by $59,000, according to CoreLogic.
The research also revealed that milestone experiences were prompting some people to invest, with funding a holiday or extended travel one of the most popular motivations. Some investors said they were pursuing other lifestyle goals, such as earning enough investment income to enable them to fully pursue a hobby or passion, renovate or upgrade their homes, or simply buy more things.
Health and family considerations, such as supporting physical and mental health, or starting a family, were also motivating some Australians to invest. This is noteworthy given Australia’s long-term declining birth rate and the impact of the current cost-of-living crisis on household budgets.
KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley says: “With the current rise in living expenses applying pressure on household finances, many Australians have decided to delay starting or expanding their families.”
In terms of investment strategies, Morningstar senior investment specialist, Shani Jayamanne, said “an inaccessible property market” was prompting more investors to look to the share market. “The relatively low barriers to entry, and the history of strong market returns over the long term, mean stocks are an attractive option for those working towards a more comfortable future,” she said.
In FY24, share market investments delivered very similar returns to real estate. The ASX 200delivered 12.1 percent total returns, incorporating share price growth and dividend income, while property delivered a median 12.2 percent in capital growth and rent, according to CoreLogic data.
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Gold miners are emerging as a compelling way to navigate market uncertainty, with analysts pointing to strong cash flows, attractive valuations and rising profit margins. As gold prices stabilize above US$4,000 an ounce, mining stocks could offer investors both downside protection and long-term upside.
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Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.
The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.
Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.
Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.
Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.
These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.
Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.
Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.
Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.
“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.
“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.
Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.
“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.
That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.
“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.
They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.
An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.
What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.
One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.
But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.
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