Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro published the following chart comparing the official cash rates of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) against the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ). Fabo stated on Twitter (X) that “the RBNZ often goes harder in both directions on rates”, in reference to its recent higher peak and lower trough
Last week, I argued that Australia is the dumbest developed nation on Earth for choosing to give itself expensive and unreliable energy when it is literally a global energy superpower rich in everything other than oil. In retrospect, I should have awarded the “dumbest developed nation” prize to Germany, which stupidly chose to blow up
In decades now long passed, the issue of migration was largely one of practical considerations, defined by questions such as: How many new arrivals per year is viable? How many homes do we need to build? What skills base needs to be expanded? What is the right path toward integrating new arrivals into society while
In the annals of wasted public investment, few attempts to build an industry can compete with the abject failure of hydrogen. $60 billion in incentives are available for hydrogen research and production, most of it sitting on the shelf, unused. Hydrogen was only ever going to be a niche industrial gas for decarbonising such things
The Market Ear on equities. Running hot The tech squeeze has already hit, with MAG 5 stocks now making up 61% of U.S. GDP. Forced buying and upside panic have stretched the right tail to the breaking point—now, the question is whether the rally can hold, or if a sharp pullback is inevitable. Too much
Housing minister Clare O’Neil continues her blame game and propaganda tour, this time taking aim at the Greens for “blocking” the construction of new homes: O’Neil’s latest attack follows the dismal dwelling construction data released this month by the ABS, which showed that completions fell by 2% in 2024-25 and were tracking 65,970 (27%) below
Australia is experiencing its worst rental crisis in living memory. According to Cotality, the number of homes listed for rent across the combined capital cities is tracking at its lowest level on record following an 18.5% annual decline. Australia’s rental vacancy rate has also declined to a record low of 1.5% nationally, down 0.4% over
Victoria disease is coming to a shopping mall near you. Wesfarmers has revealed that staff across its stores, including Kmart and Bunnings, faced over 13,500 threatening incidents from customers in the past year, including more than a thousand physical assaults. …“During the year we experienced a significant worsening of retail crime and customer threatening situations,” Wesfarmers CEO
DXY is back. AUD is being sat on by an elephant. CNY did like the trade truce. Gold is trying as the Fed hawked up, expecting Trump to go nuts. AI metals falmed out with AI. Big miners shooting star. EM too. Junk no bueno. Yields back-up. Tech dwn. Charlie McElligott sums it nicely. Jerome
Westpac credit card data tracker has been massaged to produce more positive results. Note that this release introduces major improvements to our Westpac-DataX Card Tracker Index* including significantly expanded coverage and changes that bring measures into closer alignment with official ABS estimates. These have led to significant revisions to previously published figures and growth rates. The Westpac-DataX Card