A lot has happened in a short window. Tuesday night's budget delivered the most significant tax reform package in a generation, and we have spent the last 48 hours working through what it means for adviser practice. The headline measures, replacing the 50% CGT discount with inflation indexation, a new 30% minimum CGT rate from 1 July 2027, and the limiting of negative gearing to new builds, will be canvassed exhaustively elsewhere. We have chosen to stay in our lane and focus on what it changes for multi-asset portfolios and equity selection.

The single biggest implication, in our view, is that super is now the clearly-preferred wrapper for long-duration growth exposure, as long as a client is not bumping up against contribution caps or the Division 296 threshold. Nothing changes inside super — 10% effective CGT in accumulation, zero in pension phase — while everything outside super faces the new regime. For most clients, that materially sharpens the case for maximising concessional contributions and, for those approaching retirement, sequencing realisation events into pension phase.

Outside super, the conversation becomes more nuanced. The new regime taxes nominal capital appreciation harder than franked income and harder than real economic growth. That favours, at the margin, low-turnover direct equities, broad-market ETFs, and a valuation-and-income tilt over high-turnover active strategies and stretched-multiple growth. It is not that the policy targets "growth stocks" per se, it is that strategies relying on speculative re-rating and nominal appreciation are now more expensive after tax than they used to be.

There is a near-term wrinkle worth flagging.The 14-month transition window before the new rules take effect on 1 July 2027 means clients with substantial embedded gains in concentrated positions, the CBAs and CSLs of the world, face a real planning decision. We do not know individual positions and this is not personal advice. But we do know that many Australians are sitting on large embedded gains, and some of that capital will move at some point in the next 14 months. That may add to volatility in heavily-held names, particularly approaching 30 June 2027.

Which brings us to the Macquarie Conference and the US earnings season. The pattern in both is similar: a hockey-stick in earnings momentum, but concentrated, AI-driven in the US, commodities-related in Australia. US mega-cap tech has genuinely grown into its multiple via real cash-flow delivery, and that juggernaut is hard to argue with. But consumer sentiment is poor, the K-shape persists, and CPI is re-accelerating. Our view is unchanged: participate in the breadth but stay disciplined on concentration and valuation.

The connecting thread between budget and market is the same. The composition of return matters more than the level of return. Strategies that deliver real earnings growth, franked income, and modest re-rating are relatively cheaper after the budget. Strategies that rely on multiple expansion are relatively more expensive. The new regime, for once, rewards what disciplined investors should be doing anyway.