The great coal crash continues. Thermal coal has broken $100 and continues to fall. Coking coal is the mirror image. I see no end in sight to either. The less gloomy news is the price falls are more or less on track for the budget. Key commodity prices are assumed to decline from elevated levels
In late 2023, newly appointed Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan ignored expert advice and signed the tunnelling contract to build the first stage of the $200 billion Suburban Rail Loop (SRL). “We are full steam ahead with the Suburban Rail Loop – by 2026, tunnel boring machines will be in the ground and Victorians will be
The Market Ear with a pearler. A key risk to the market Foreigners hold a record amount of US stocks. And they have just started selling. Deutsche Bank says that there could easily be one trillion dollars of foreign selling. This is way bigger than the corporate demand (=the biggest buyer) estimated this year. Is
Slightly better and going nowhere fast. Flash Australia PMI Composite Output Index(1): 51.3 (Feb: 50.6). 7-month high. Flash Australia Services PMI Business Activity Index(2): 51.2 (Feb: 50.8). 2-month high. Flash Australia Manufacturing Output Index(3): 51.9 (Feb: 49.7). 29-month high. Flash Australia Manufacturing PMI(4): 52.6 (Feb: 50.4). 29-month high. There’s enough for Warren Hogan to have
The iron ore jaws are wide. Either rebar must rise or iron ore fall. Not much hope of the former! Steel demand sucks. Steel supply is better this week but still sucks. May is not a good period for iron ore, and March has been unseasonably weak already. Mwahaha.
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Oh dear. The Australian. Jim Chalmers will extend energy bill rebates for another six months in Tuesday’s budget, adding an extra $1.8bn to the pre-election spending splurge with an aim of setting up a cost-of-living fight with Peter Dutton. Despite energy bills being set to increase by up to 9 per cent next financial year,
Friday night saw a very hesitant risk complex trying to digest the recent Bank of England and Swiss Central Bank meetings, while trying to anticipate what the Fanta Fuhrer in the Oval Office is going to do next with tariffs. Wall Street initially pulled back slightly in line with European stocks before rebounding later in
Harry Ottley, economist at CBA, published a terrific set of charts showing the explosion in non-market jobs, where there is often a lack of market prices and wages are heavily subsidised by the government, and the implications for Australia’s labour productivity. Ottley shows that in the year to Q4 2024, the number of employed persons
The Department of Education released data on the number of international students studying in Australia. A record 1.095 million international students were enrolled in Australia at the end of December 2024. This was up around 150,000 from the pre-COVID peak in 2019 and around 500,000 higher than a decade ago. International student commencements also hit
DXY is back and EUR flamed out. AUD is getting kicked in the teeth. And the shorts have piled back in. Lead boots tripped. Trump will regret damaging Iranian oil output. Commodities were hammered. Big miners are in a big bear market. EM yawn. Junk stressed a bit. Need more. Yields flat. Stocks flat. AUD