Back in 2022, when Australia was reeling from a historic gas price shock as East Coast energy cartels war-profiteered the invasion of Ukraine, Resources Minister Mad King was dispatched to bring them into line. Instead, the cartel snowed the minister in a matter of hours as she came away with a deal that guaranteed the
CoreLogic’s housing market report revealed that national asking rents rose by 0.2% in October, with annual growth slowing to 5.8%. This represented the smallest annual increase in rents since the year ended April 2021. CoreLogic noted that the “easing in rental growth is good news for inflation” given that rents comprise one of the largest
The punters are usually right about monetary policy and right now they are dovish. From Westpac’s superb Red Book comes a flush of relief: The most striking sentiment shift over the last 3mths has again been around consumer expectations for interest rates, this time in the form of a veritable collapse in rate rise fears.
The Market Ear with equity market internals. Time to welcome fear? We have seen the biggest pullback in CNN’s greed/fear index in a while. CNN SOX – make or break SOX is down to the short term trend line that has been in place since August lows. Note we are breaking below the 200 day
KPMG’s head of turnaround and restructuring, Gayle Dickerson, has warned that home builders were being squeezed by soaring costs and a lack of available labour. “It means that there are less builders to meet any demand for new housing stock”, she said. “This is exacerbated by builders flocking to government infrastructure projects, where there is
The Department of Home Affairs released temporary visa data for the September quarter of 2024, revealing that there were 2,463,600 temporary visa holders in Australia, excluding visitors, at the end of September. This was an all-time high for the September quarter and a 163,600 rise over the same time in 2023. There were also nearly
Albo A.K.A Klepto has a tin ear: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has moved to calm ministerial colleagues about the Qantas flights saga, insisting at a meeting of his entire ministry on Wednesday that he has his house in order and is the victim of an unfair media campaign. …Albanese told his ministers that expenses scandals
On Thursday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released retail sales data for Q3, which recorded a 0.46% rise in sales volumes over the quarter and a 1.7% increase year-on-year. The following table from Alex Joiner at IFM Investors breaks down the key figures: Joiner also pointed out that retail sales volumes per capita have
SHFE has not yet given up hope: Dalian was not so lucky: The steel PMI improved some: This is related to a pre-stimulus pick-up in infrastructure seen in cement demand: I can’t find any reasons to be bullish. Perhaps seasonality will be enough to hold prices into the New Year. Meanwhile, more supply is coming:
A rough night for stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic with tech stocks leading the charge down with Wall Street falling more than 2% across the board on earnings scares, not Halloween or other clowns riding around in garbage trucks. Tonight’s US non-farm payrolls employment print will now prove quite volatile as other