The ABS monthly number is out, and whoa! Both headline and trimmed mean came in 10bps above consensus. The details aren’t good, either. How has Australia managed to experience 4% goods inflation while China is flooding the world with dirt-cheap products displaced from the US? Energy shock, I’m guessing. The same is still playing out
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The charts look absolutely horrible, but when Goldman does a seaonal comparions it’s not as bad. It compared the daily average volume during the 2026 CNY holidays (Feb15th-23rd) vs. 2025 holiday period (Jan 28th-Feb 4th): against an undemanding base, sampled primary markets recorded improvements with daily average volume rising +39%, while secondary markets registered more
The ABC reported that only half of the 22,000 homes approved for construction in Western Sydney are proceeding to construction because there are not enough buyers able or willing to pay enough to cover construction costs. KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley warned that interest rate rises would worsen the viability of new apartment projects due
Australia's most powerful battery is likely to continue to limp along at around half of its promised capacity for most of the year, with delivery of a replacement transformer expected in the second half of 2026.
Charts from TME. The IGV software index is trading at 23 RSI. Seventh level of hell. Yet AI remains a tool, not a process manager. The hallucination rate is still high and is a feature, not a bug of LLMs. My argument is that humans may have already proven themselves more useless and mistake-prone than
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The evidence from around the world shows that when you raise energy costs, your economy deindustrialises. Consider the following examples. Germany: Germany once had about 22 GW of nuclear power, producing over 160 TWh annually at a reasonable cost and with no emissions. Following the Fukushima accident in 2011, Berlin shut down 8 GW of
ANZ’s major projects series has some good and bad news. In 2024–2025, major projects in Australia’s pipeline will reach $71 billion. They are expected to peak at $105 billion in 2027–2028, later than ANZ previously thought. This change happened because project schedules and financial situations have changed. After a decade of huge public megaprojects, Australia’s
Australia’s housing affordability has never been worse. According to Cotality, the nation’s dwelling price-to-income ratio was tracking at a record high of 8.2 in the September quarter of 2025: The time taken to save a 20% deposit was a record high 11 years, according to Cotality: The share of income required to pay the median
Vladimir Zelensky brought some of his most ardent fans to Kiev to mark the fourth anniversary of his wartime leadership, but the supporting actors in the Ukraine Cinematic Universe had little to offer him.
A look at the guests who showed up suggests Ukraine’s backers are divided into those who have to and those who don’t.
Today’s national polling roundup suggests a modest movement following the Liberal leadership change, with the LNP improving slightly but not decisively reshaping the political landscape. The latest YouGov-Sky News Pulse poll shows the Coalition rising three points to 22%, narrowing but not overtaking One Nation, which fell four points to 24%. Labor slipped one point
There’s not much very encouraging going on for ferrous. Chinese markets reopned, popped and dropped. Steel is at news lows. SGX was the outlier. SMM tells of a weak market as the most-traded contract, I2605, closed at 740.5 yuan/mt, which is 1.79% lower than the previous trading day. This means that DCE iron ore continued
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How does owning your home or renting impact on how you vote? For today’s podcast, Ben was joined by Shaun Ratcliff and Josh Goddard to discuss what we know about how home ownership (or asset ownership more broadly) influences voting trends. We discuss Josh’s research looking at 14 different Western democracies, and also hear from Shaun about more research closer to home.
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding the legal finding that it has relied on for nearly two decades to limit the heat-trapping pollution that spews from vehicle tailpipes, oil refineries and factories.