Asian share markets are stumbling around with a variety of macro pressures overshadowing the broad gains on Wall Street and European markets overnight. Meanwhile the fall in business confidence in Australia and the slightly higher dollar is seeing local shares selloff again. The Australian dollar has now burst through the 65 cent level as the
Last week, the Albanese government announced that Australia’s permanent migrant intake would be maintained at the historically high level of 185,000. William Burke, founder of Sustainable Australia Party, argues that the permanent migrant intake is understated by at least 50,000 for the following reasons: “It does not count the annual permanent Humanitarian Program of around
DXY is looking decidedly ill. AUD is rampaging again. CNY is up. Gold is up. Oil is down. Metals meh. Mining bear intact. EM to the moon. Junk fine. Major US yield breakdown across the curve. Stock ATH. Not much doubting what’s going on here. The Fed is coming, and its independence might be going,
I am bullish but not a buyer here. The Market Ear. “Overboughter” Gold continues exploding higher post the powerful break out of the triangle formation. Note RSI has been marginally higher once since “forever”. Source: LSEG Workspac Zooming out Gold weekly RSI at very overbought levels, but we have seen the shiny metal go into
The thing about being a groveller is that you invite being bullied. China has accused Australia and Japan of prvoking tensions in the Asia-Pacific region after their foreign and defence ministers met in Tokyo days after Beijing staged its largest military parade in decades. In an editorial on Monday, the state-run China Daily said the
Seriously, who would want to be a renter in Australia? After borders reopened in late 2021 and temporary migrants flooded into Australia in record volumes, rents surged. At the end of 2024, Cotality (now CoreLogic) estimated that rental payments were chewing up a record share of household income. Cotality’s latest Quarterly Rental Review estimated that
The Westpac credit card tracker is better but not much. During the second part of August, the Tracker Index increased by almost 1 point to close the month at 138.5, which is near the upper end of the range that has been in place since April. The quarterly increase remains slow. Base effects from weather
The Australian Labor Party’s 2023 National Policy Platform included the aspiration to progressively increase the Humanitarian Program to 27,000 places per year. The Albanese government already increased the Refugee and Humanitarian Program from 13,750 during the pandemic to 20,000 places in 2023-24 and 2024-25. The Australian Greens have called on Australia to lift the humanitarian
The ferrous complex is very confused as steel prices tumble while iron ore breaks out. The data flow ranges from soft to weak. The latest CISA data for the end of August cratered 8%. Inventories fell 4% so the equilibrium is in the middle. Steel output is down 3.1% year to date and still falling.
Economists have regularly debated the role of government as a driver of the economy since the Covid-19 pandemic. The most common data point is the contribution of the government to overall economic activity. As the chart below illustrates, over most of the last 40 years, the proportion of GDP derived directly from government generally moved