DXY is falling. EUR rising. AUD follows the latter. Held back by CNY. Surely time’s up for oil. Commods meh. Miners meh. EM meh. If spread widen, look out below. Yields held on. Stocks fluctuated. The market is well short AUD again. Options are not the main driver of value, but they are an indicator.
Wall Street crumbled again overnight as the realisation has set in that the Don in the Oval Office is hell bent on upending the global trade order, as Canada hit back with their own tariffs. The EU is pushing for a near trillion Euro boost in defence spending which sent the Euro soaring against the
It’s almost as if they think nobody is watching. Cramming more classrooms into existing schools would be necessary to save Victoria’s cash-strapped government billions of dollars on building critical new campuses, according to the state’s peak infrastructure body. Infrastructure Victoria says the state will need to build another 60 government schools in the decade to
Australia’s housing market is heating up following the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) 0.25% interest rate cut last month and expectations of further reductions this year. As illustrated in the following chart, CoreLogic’s daily dwelling values index has rebounded strongly, driven by Sydney and Melbourne. At the aggregate 5-city level, dwelling values have risen by
Wages should be firm according to the latest Indeed job ad index. ANZ-Indeed Australian Job Ads declined 1.4% m/m in February, but this follows an upwardly revised 1.3% m/m rise in January. In trend terms, the series was down 0.3% m/m. ANZ-Indeed Australian Job Ads is down 9.2% annually. The series is just 0.9% higher
Last month’s interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) was about as hawkish as possible. The RBA’s statement explicitly noted that the decision to cut the official cash rate by 0.25% was ‘line-ball’ with upside risks to inflation remaining: “However, upside risks remain. Some recent labour market data have been unexpectedly strong,
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Monday released the Q4 2024 Business Indicators, which showed that non-mining company profits have never been higher (excluding the pandemic spike). Despite the stellar profits, Australian Industry Group (AIG) CEO, Innes Willox, attacked what he labelled a “wages blowout”, which is placing “mounting pressure on business balance sheets”:
ANZ CEO Shayne Elliot described Victoria as “one of the toughest” places to do business. It is easy to see why. The Victorian government introduced a payroll tax surcharge in the 2021-22 State Budget as part of a mental health and wellness levy, but only for businesses with a payroll of $10 million or more.
Last month, Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro posted the following chart tracking labour productivity across major advanced nations. As you can see, Australia’s labour productivity growth has been among the worst in the advanced world after recording zero improvement since 2016. Last week, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) Michael Plumb delivered a speech to a
Asian share markets are seeing generally positive results across the board but have been overshadowed by the spike in cryptocurrencies on the latest Trump spewing of verbal diarrhea that continues to evaporate confidence in the USD. Indeed King Dollar is falling against most of the majors with the Australian dollar coming back with a reprieve