In the annals of wasted public investment, few attempts to build an industry can compete with the abject failure of hydrogen. $60 billion in incentives are available for hydrogen research and production, most of it sitting on the shelf, unused. Hydrogen was only ever going to be a niche industrial gas for decarbonising such things
The Market Ear on equities. Running hot The tech squeeze has already hit, with MAG 5 stocks now making up 61% of U.S. GDP. Forced buying and upside panic have stretched the right tail to the breaking point—now, the question is whether the rally can hold, or if a sharp pullback is inevitable. Too much
Housing minister Clare O’Neil continues her blame game and propaganda tour, this time taking aim at the Greens for “blocking” the construction of new homes: O’Neil’s latest attack follows the dismal dwelling construction data released this month by the ABS, which showed that completions fell by 2% in 2024-25 and were tracking 65,970 (27%) below
Australia is experiencing its worst rental crisis in living memory. According to Cotality, the number of homes listed for rent across the combined capital cities is tracking at its lowest level on record following an 18.5% annual decline. Australia’s rental vacancy rate has also declined to a record low of 1.5% nationally, down 0.4% over
Victoria disease is coming to a shopping mall near you. Wesfarmers has revealed that staff across its stores, including Kmart and Bunnings, faced over 13,500 threatening incidents from customers in the past year, including more than a thousand physical assaults. …“During the year we experienced a significant worsening of retail crime and customer threatening situations,” Wesfarmers CEO
DXY is back. AUD is being sat on by an elephant. CNY did like the trade truce. Gold is trying as the Fed hawked up, expecting Trump to go nuts. AI metals falmed out with AI. Big miners shooting star. EM too. Junk no bueno. Yields back-up. Tech dwn. Charlie McElligott sums it nicely. Jerome
Westpac credit card data tracker has been massaged to produce more positive results. Note that this release introduces major improvements to our Westpac-DataX Card Tracker Index* including significantly expanded coverage and changes that bring measures into closer alignment with official ABS estimates. These have led to significant revisions to previously published figures and growth rates. The Westpac-DataX Card
Risk markets fell were uneasy overnight on the so-called US-China truce out of the summit between the Trump and Xi regimes with Wall Street falling back despite very solid earnings from Amazon as Meta was dumped more than 11% on AI troubles. The USD reasserted its recent strength against all the majors – except gold
The Albanese government’s 5% deposit scheme for first home buyers, which came into effect on 1 October, had the desired effect on home prices. Cotality’s daily dwelling values index, which covers the five major capital city markets, surged by 1.1% in October, driven by Perth (1.9%), Brisbane (1.6%), and Adelaide (1.4%). Over the October quarter,
Renew Economy loves to boast whenever wind and solar generation spike and comprise an oversized share of electricity generation. For example, on 23 June 2025, Renew Economy boasted that wind generation hit a record across eastern Australia: “According to data from GPE NEMLog, wind and solar set a new output peak of 12,563 megawatts (MW)