Opening the aperture on the growth of the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Index over the past two decades makes for interesting reading.

For a hot second there, we all thought 2025 was going to be fairly cruisy. The continuation of a strong bull-run, the end to recession fears, a couple of rate cuts. The biggest concern was perhaps the high premiums on stocks like the Magnificent Seven.

This week I attended a timely symposium, ‘Awakening The Dragon’, hosted by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in collaboration with CITIC CLSA and the Bank of China Syd Branch. There were several notable takeaways: