A sea of green across Asian share markets as we head into the low volume Christmas period with a solid finish on Wall Street on Friday night flowing through to the regions risk markets overall. The Australian dollar is bouncing back on a slightly weaker USD with a breakout above the 66 cent level. Oil
New Zealand house prices continue to fall. The REINZ House Price Index fell 0.3% over the past two months (seasonally adjusted), with economists describing the result as “renewed weakness” after a brief stabilisation earlier in the year. Compared to May, house prices are down by more than 1.2%. Home sales were weak in November, declining
It is better late than never, but the Albanese government has finally announced a domestic gas reservation scheme for the East Coast of Australia. Under the plan, Australia’s largest exporters would set aside up to 25% of annual east coast gas production for domestic use. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said Australians “should
By Stephen Saunders: On its triennial immigration stats, Albanese Australia is a radical outlier not the cautious reformer of embedded media narratives. Not even Bondi can budge him. The Labor-Liberal duopoly has made the concept of Big Australia central to its economic policy. After COVID froze mass migration, Morrison and Albanese rushed it back, bigger than
On the day after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the American left was thoroughly stunned; it had lost the race for the White House to a figure that many believed to be thoroughly unelectable. That morning, author and political activist Michael Moore appeared on CNBC’s breakfast show ‘Morning Joe’. What followed was a strange but
In a recent article for the Australian Financial Review, economist Christopher Joye made the case that the expansion of government at all levels was putting upward pressure on inflation and, by extension, interest rates. “At the federal level, the annualised monthly trend budget deficit has deteriorated rapidly from $12 billion in December 2024 to $24
The new prudential standard announced last month by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) caps high-risk mortgages (i.e., with a debt-to-income ratio greater than 6x) at 20% of new lending, effective from February 2026. In line with government objectives to increase affordability through supply incentives, APRA’s policy does not apply to newly constructed homes. It
Wall Street is slowly drifting into holiday mode as risk markets peer through to 2026, with volatility contained to currency markets as Yen weakens significantly on the back of Friday’s rate hike by the BOJ. The USD took back some losses against some of the other majors with Euro now at a two week low
Earlier this month, I argued that Victoria was a “lead weight on Australia”, which was informed by the latest state accounts from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). These data show that Victoria’s per capita gross state product (GSP) fell by 0.8% in 2024-25 and has risen by only 10.0% since the Global Financial Crisis
From the Market Ear: Nothing NASDAQ NASDAQ is in the middle of the range, trading at the same levels we traded at in late Nov, early Nov, late Oct, early Oct…you get the point. Why not at least at ATH? SPX has hugged bond volatility all year. The inverted MOVE is screaming ATHs… equities just