Australia has too many cafes, and many will need to close down. According to IBIS World, over 27,000 cafes and coffee shops operate in Australia. Competition is fierce, with multiple cafes often operating at the same locations. And there isn’t enough consumer demand to sustain them. Australian households are caught in a cost-of-living crisis. Real
Much ado about nothing in iron ore. Some good charts from ANZ. Property steel is still falling. I expect it to fall much more than they do this year. Non-property demand is going nowhere in volume terms. Exports are at risk. The market is supported somewhat by a weak CNY restock. 90-100 per tonne probably
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Now this is some good news on gas for once. The planned LNG import terminal at Port Kembla, backed by billionaire Andrew Forrest’s Squadron, will not be ready to receive gas until at least mid-2027, delaying a key project intended to safeguard Australia’s east coast energy supply. Rob Wheals, the chief executive of Squadron Energy,
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Exorbitant land costs are the fundamental driver behind Australia’s expensive housing. During 2023-24, the residential land values that underpin the housing market grew by 8.8%, reaching a valuation of $7.7 trillion. Over the 35 years to 2023–24, residential land values skyrocketed from 1.1 to 2.9 times Australia’s GDP. In contrast, aggregate structure values only increased
More pain from The Market Ear. After the China/US trade talks JPM’s great derivatives team dives in: “The China-US trade talks in Geneva have been more positive than anticipated and have resulted in a normalization of the volatility spread between the S&P 500 and European indices. We recommend buying SPX short-dated calls, fully funded by selling
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New Zealand experienced one of the world’s biggest house price booms over the pandemic, with prices soaring by around 30%. As a result, the 2022 Demographia Housing Affordability Survey ranked New Zealand as having one of the world’s most expensive housing markets, with a median multiple of 11.2 in 2021. New Zealand’s market has since
DXY is taking a breather. That could not help the AUD. No lead boots. Gold up. Metals down. Big miners still look fugly. EM stocks hit resistance. Junk says no problemo. Yields eased. Stocks mixed. TS Lombard sounds about right today. The US-China truce removes major USD downside risk. The significant de-escalation in trade tensions
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Australian households are experiencing their longest recession in generations. The Q4 national accounts released in March showed that real per capita home consumption declined for the eighth consecutive quarter. A sharp dip in household incomes is driving the decline in consumption. As shown below, as of Q4 2024, real per capita household consumption had fallen
It’s a new and improved Albo with the same old message. “We had progressive patriotism,” Albanese said of the Labor campaign message. “We spoke about doing things the Australian way, not looking towards any other method or ideology from overseas. “At a time where there’s conflict in the world, where people are often divided on
Tasmania flew under the radar in the lead up to the recent election, because of the lack of state polling in Tasmania. It was a “known unknown” to quote Donald Rumsfeld, and I do remember commenting that we didn’t know how things were going in Tasmania, but still we did not know. This did create space for some fevered commenters on this website to confidently assert that Labor was on track to be badly beaten, but now we know better.