The Market Ear on the latest stock internals. Fluid You know things are still “fluid” when VIX is at 29, up 4-5% on the day and still “lagging” the VVIX.. Refinitiv Still skewed The crowd remains long and in need of downside protection still. Skew (SDEX index) bouncing higher from already very well bid levels
Qingdao iron ore is at $97.51, down 1% this morning. Shanghai rebar futures and SGX both fell yesterday: Dalian fell as well: Coking coal tacked on a few points in a minor miracle: The news flow is bad. Chinese iron ore imports for July came in at 102.8mt, up 5.7% year on year however that
Wall Street is rolling over again despite a good start to the session with bond markets the culprit once more with some high yield auctions spooking the risk complex. A late swing to USD caused some extra unwanted volatility in currency markets as well, which all points to an interesting session here in Asia on
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released its cost-of-living indices for the June quarter, which showed that employee households have been hardest hit. Employee cost of living rose by 6.2% in the year to June 2024, well above the 3.8% increase in CPI inflation. The 6.2% increase in living costs also easily exceeded wage
The higher education lobby has spat the dummy over the Albanese government’s modest proposed caps to international students, which would see student numbers limited to 40% of total enrolments. Australia’s million-dollar vice-chancellors warned that 14,000 jobs could be lost across the industry if the caps go ahead. Whereas the CEO of lobby group Universities Australia,
Here it is in black and white: The RBA is refusing to accept Treasurer Jim “Chicken” Chalmers’ attempt to hide the energy shock with bill rebates: In the RBA’s view, either the Albanese government addresses the core driver of the energy shock, the gas cartel, or inflation is not coming down. In the central bank’s
Asian share markets are trying to reduce in volatility today as some semblance of calm returns to all the risk markets, particularly bonds. Yen is weakening again to alleviate some pressure on Japanese equities which are seeing the best reduction in volatility while local issues were benign after an uptick in unemployment. The Australian dollar
On Tuesday night, I was interviewed by Sky News’ Andrew Bolt, where I explained how the federal and state governments are working at cross-purposes with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), creating what Tarric Brooker termed a “burnout economy”. Andrew Bolt: Inflation’s still far too high. Why didn’t the Reserve Bank hike interest rates? Leith
Victoria has become Australia’s homelessness capital. Victoria has the lowest proportion of social housing in Australia, accounting for only 3% of total dwellings. This is far lower than the national average of 4.2%, already considered low by international standards. Last year, The Guardian reported that Victoria’s social housing stock increased by only 74 units in
The past week or so has seen Prime Minister Anthony Albanese bald-faced lie or mislead Australians on the state of the economy and Labor’s performance. I have captured these lies in the below YouTube video: The first lie relates to energy. Albo keeps telling us that Labor has delivered cheaper energy prices. Yet, Australians on