The latest Freshwater poll says it all: When each person polled was asked to select three top issues of concern from a list of 16, cost of living remained well at the top with 74 per cent, a fall of 2 points since last month. But the Coalition’s lead over Labor as the best party
The Market Ear on whacky dynamics. Conservative nets Net exposure for long/short equity hedge funds pretty conservative. JPM PI 37%-tile Net leverage at 37%-tile (12m) for long/short funds on GS prime data. HFs net sold US equities for a 5th straight week,driven by short sales outpacing long buys GS Prime BofA Bull & Bear Indicator
Last month, former independent senator for South Australia, Rex Patrick, published an explosive report at MichaelWest.com.au explaining how the federal government and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) had blocked a gas reservation options paper finalised in the dying days of the former Coalition government. The primary reason why this options paper was blocked is because
State governments are no longer contributing to inflation. They are withdrawing from GDP, according to ANZ: Tasmania’s 2024-25 budget was the final state budget to be released. It showed cumulative budget deficits between 2023-24 and 2026-27 tripled to over $3.1bn compared with the 2023-24 Revised Estimates Report from February. Our chart of the week shows
Westpac’s credit card tracker is still very soft. The Westpac Card Tracker Index* lifted slightly over the two weeks to September 7, rising 0.5pts to 135.9. The ‘Stage 3’ tax cuts and other fiscal support measures that came into effect at the start of July look to be generating a little more traction with but
I noted last week how the latest net permanent and long-term arrivals data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has reported record net arrivals so far in 2024: As shown above, there were 335,184 net arrivals in the first seven months of 2024, 15,361 higher than last year’s record arrivals and 110,175 higher than
The Chinese economy is sinking faster and Bloomberg has become desperate: China’s economy lost momentum in August as activity cooled across the board, pointing to mounting risks to achieving the government’s annual growth target. Measures of factory output, consumption and investment all slowed more than economists had forecast, while jobless rate unexpectedly rose to a
After Friday’s short squeeze, iron ore fell sharply into the weekend. For once, steel margins improved: Weekend data was at least as bad as expected and probably worse. Steel output was bereft in August: Along with cement: Once again, it is steel recycling that is most brutalised: But pig iron ore output is steadily trending
Friday night saw another broad advance across European and American stocks, taking back their previous weekly loss to keep September a scratch month so far. The mid week CPI print was followed up by a more supportive consumer sentiment print that initially saw USD go lower against the majors before a very late push higher
Victorians are facing decades of debt servitude thanks to the incompetence of the state government. A decade of excessive spending on bureaucrats, tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure cost overruns, and pandemic lockdown expenses have left Victoria with the country’s highest state government debt and the lowest credit rating: Former Treasury economist Stephen Anthony