Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), warned that a foreign government might attempt to kill a dissident on Australian territory, and the majority of outlets carried his warning overnight. In a speech to Sydney’s Lowy Institute think tank yesterday night, the head of ASIO stated that there was a “realistic possibility”
The jaws must shut to restore steel mill profitability. The range trade must break down. Scuttlebutt is nasty. Iron ore prices typically rebound from early November to February before easing. However, significant losses from winter stockpiling in recent years, along with current high operating rates, may curb stockpiling enthusiasm this year, said Chinese broker Zhongtai
The Market Ear has some concerns. AI’s not the problem. Euphoria is No, this isn’t a “we hate AI” note. It’s a trading technical read on a market that’s gone full parabolic. For the first time in over a year, every indicator we track in Mag7 is flashing red contrarian sell. The indicators don’t care
God save me from the eggheds of the RBA. RBA governor Michele Bullock, in her opening statement addressing a press conference, says the central bank may have misjudged “the gap” between supply and demand in the economy. “Overall, when we take into account a broad range of indicators, we judge that the labour market is
DXY is breaking out in the nightmare scenario for everybody. AUD was monkeyhammered. CNY is gassed. Gold and oil no bueno. AI metals no more. The chosen one gaps into madness. EM yeh, nah. Junk knew. Yields offer hope. Stocks did a gold. There is nothing this market hates more than a rising DXY. One
Wall Street corrected sharply overnight led mainly by tech stocks as the NASDAQ fell back nearly 2% in response to a variety of concerns – mainly the looming spectre of stagflation – but also some disappointment around earnings at the orc-stronghold of Palantir. The USD is pushing higher against all the majors with the Canadian
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released housing approvals data for September, which recorded 16,360 trend approvals, a 0.9% increase from August. It was the strongest trend monthly approvals since February 2022. Even so, approvals in September were 3,640 (18%) behind the National Housing Accord’s five-year target of building 20,000 homes per month. In the
Last week, I reported on the latest annual national accounts from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which showed that the total value of residential land in Australia increased by 7.0% during the 2024-25 financial year to a record $8.3 trillion. The next chart shows that total residential land values in Australia have skyrocketed from
Not much action on Asian markets in today’s session with local markets pivoting on the RBA meeting where as expected the boffins of Martin Place held fire again and put out most chances of further rate cuts in the future. This stabilised the Australian dollar somewhat, in comparison to other undollars which are seeing some
Following last week’s CPI inflation shocker, financial markets abandoned hopes of further rate cuts. As expected, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) chose to hold the official cash rate steady at 3.60%, with its commentary turning hawkish. The Bank’s statement noted that “inflation has picked up”, with the 1.0% trimmed mean inflation print of 1.0%