Young Canadians squeezed by housing are turning away from Justin Trudeau’s left-leaning Liberal Party: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015 with the support of younger Canadians drawn to his optimistic messaging and socially progressive values. Trudeau’s primary adversary, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, has made significant gains among younger voters since he aggressively criticised
Westpac with the leading index. Leading Index growth rate drops to –0.23%. • Momentum likely to remain weak throughout 2024. • Pull-back in commodity prices drives latest slowing. • Most other components remain soft. The six-month annualised growth rate in the Westpac Melbourne Institute Leading Index, which indicates the likely pace of economic activity relative
Westpac predicts that New Zealand CPI inflation will rise by 0.8% in the March quarter. That would see the annual inflation rate drop to 4.2%, down from 4.7% at the end of 2023. However, CPI inflation would still be stronger than the Reserve Bank assumed in its February Monetary Policy Statement. Westpac notes that while
Australia’s population increased by a record 660,000 people in the year to September, which is roughly 1.5 times the size of Canberra. On Tuesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released net permanent and long-term arrivals figures for February, revealing record arrivals on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. An unprecedented 105,460 net permanent and
Continued war jitters across the Middle East plus further Fedspeak overnight is not helping risk to stabilise, although Wall Street was able to put in only minor losses with Asian markets still reeling from yesterday’s wider selloff. The USD continues to push back against the undollars, although gold remains unflappable while bond yields jumped to
Six stats to get you going this morning 1. The Dow closed lower for its 6th straight red day. The index is now down over 2,000 points from its recent all time high. 2. The S&P 500 closed below its 50-day moving average Monday for the first time since last November, ending the 10th longest
Markets love to do a Costanza. But it cannot happen for long when fundamentals are so godawful that they hold sway anyway. Yesterday, iron ore broke its short squeeze on terrible Chinese data: Terrible data for iron ore, that is. Overall, the data was fine. Dalian is as volatile as ever for iron ore snd
CBA economist Harry Ottley published the following chart showing how rental growth is highly correlated to the ratio of population growth to new apartment construction: The news on this front is disastrous for renters, with approvals for the construction of new apartments plunging to their lowest level since February 2012: Annual high-rise apartment approvals were
Let’s call it the Llewellyn Turning Point. That moment when every Emerging Market shifts beyond investment utilising steel into other stuff like human beings. China is there. On the surface, March data looked OK: Industrial production rose 4.5% in March from a year earlier (below economists’ forecast of 6%). Industrial output rose 6.1% for the first quarter (below the 7.0% in
The rocky start to the trading week is deepening with stock markets in Asia losing significant ground in response to the escalation in conflict across the Middle East, with a further spike in USD and bond yields. The latest Chinese GDP print did little to assuage risk sentiment either. The Australian dollar is trying to