The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released housing approvals data for September, which recorded 16,360 trend approvals, a 0.9% increase from August. It was the strongest trend monthly approvals since February 2022. Even so, approvals in September were 3,640 (18%) behind the National Housing Accord’s five-year target of building 20,000 homes per month. In the
..... an awkward introduction in Kyiv where Ambassador Whitaker (U.S. ambassador to NATO) and European leaders meet. Whitaker frames the U.S. role as selling weapons to NATO allies — who then supply them to Ukraine — under a “we won’t give things away, we’ll sell them” policy (the “PURL” initiative). He mentions roughly $2.5 billion in expected sales/packages.
Last week, I reported on the latest annual national accounts from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which showed that the total value of residential land in Australia increased by 7.0% during the 2024-25 financial year to a record $8.3 trillion. The next chart shows that total residential land values in Australia have skyrocketed from
On Monday, the charity Oxfam published a report on the growth of social inequality in the United States, titled “Unequal: The Rise of a New American Oligarchy.”
I think I was eating a sandwich… No. No, it was a wrap. That’s right. I had some leftover rice and maple-baked salmon, and I decided to heat that up for lunch. And thus, for the forty-second year in a row, I missed the Melbourne Cup.
Normally I do it on purpose, because I’m weird. (I missed it when I was 19 and felt quite special, so I kept on missing it, each year, on purpose. But this year, I just forgot it was on.
Can confirm the tradies working on my roof didn’t stop either. They just kept bashing away at the job, for which I’m grateful.
Not much action on Asian markets in today’s session with local markets pivoting on the RBA meeting where as expected the boffins of Martin Place held fire again and put out most chances of further rate cuts in the future. This stabilised the Australian dollar somewhat, in comparison to other undollars which are seeing some
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Following last week’s CPI inflation shocker, financial markets abandoned hopes of further rate cuts. As expected, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) chose to hold the official cash rate steady at 3.60%, with its commentary turning hawkish. The Bank’s statement noted that “inflation has picked up”, with the 1.0% trimmed mean inflation print of 1.0%
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DXY has a juicy double bottom and is threatening to break out. AUD is under pressure. CNY too. Oil and gold are becalmed. The rising DXY is pressuring metals. Big miners ouch! EM is OK but will struggle if DXY rises. Junk is sending out a warning. Yields are still threatening to back up. Stocks
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Last week, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported that the policy-relevant trimmed mean inflation surged by 1.0% in the September quarter to be 3.0% higher year-on-year—the top of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) target band. Inflation pressures were broad-based, with the share of CPI items growing above 3% rising to 50% in Q3, up