New Zealand’s economy continues to face severe challenges. As illustrated below by Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s GDP growth nowcast is pointing to a 0.2% decline in real GDP in Q2 2025. New Zealand’s labour market is also in dire straits, with unemployment and underutilisation rates soaring to near-decade
I have been posting stuff on the Blotreport for over eight years now, and I receive an enormous amount of spam, sometimes up to 60 a day, which my wonderful spam filter invariably catches. When I started back in early 2017, a fair proportion of the spam was porn, both gay and straight. That eventually faded away and was replaced, strangely, by several other themes, including a spate of “buy a house in Bali” spam. That was fairly short-lived, and was replaced even more bizarrely by “get a diploma in Moscow, which faded fairly recently, although the occasional one still crops up.
At the end of 2024, CoreLogic (now Cotality) reported that the national dwelling value to income ratio and the percentage of income required to service a new mortgage were tracking at a record high. Cotality’s July housing report showed that the median dwelling value across Australia’s capital cities was $926,854 at the end of July.
The Market Ear on bearish seasonality. Two-faced market Market sentiment surveys and hedge fund positioning data continue to be far from exuberant, but there is of course still an insane amount of buying going on. Let’s have a look at the latest in terms of flow and positioning data out over the weekend, and why
The post Get your hedges appeared first on MacroBusiness.
RBC with the note. As anticipated, the Anchorage meeting between President Trump and Putin yielded no serious deal specifics but plenty of smiles and positive sound bites signaling diplomatic progress. Ahead of Friday, we noted that the prospects of meaningful sanctions relief stemming from this summit were minimal, due in large part to the fact
The post Ukraine war progress slow appeared first on MacroBusiness.
DXY is refusing to go away. AUD is looking shaky. CNY stable. Gold and oil becalmed. Metals are troubled. Mining bear is back. EM stocks are filling the upside breakout. Junk fine. Yields firming a little. Stocks stuck. Morgan Stanley has a take I agree with. The good news was tariff price pressures were muted
The post Fed hawks to savage Australian dollar appeared first on MacroBusiness.
South Australia is held up as the nation’s renewable energy leader with the highest penetration of wind and solar generation in the nation. South Australia shut down its last coal-fired power plant in 2016 and now generates more than 70% of its electricity from renewable sources, mainly wind and solar. However, the shutting down of
Wetspac with the note. Westpac Consumer Sentiment Index up 5.7% to 98.5 in August. • RBA’s third rate cut for the year provides a clear boost. • Long period of pessimism finally coming to an end. • Consumers less anxious about finances, cautiously positive on economy. • Sentiment lift broad-based, not just confined to those
The post Rate cut sends house price hopes berserk appeared first on MacroBusiness.
Amidst the release of the Reserve Bank’s August Statement on Monetary Policy and the Albanese government’s upcoming roundtable summit, the issue of productivity growth has become a source of great debate and some controversy. On Twitter (also known as X), Nationals Senator Matt Canavan posted a chart from the Australian Financial Review showing productivity growth
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky hailed Monday’s negotiations with US President Donald Trump as the best meeting they have ever had.