Macro Afternoon: 7 May 2025
AUD/USD EUR/USD USD/JPY GBP/USD Gold WTI Brent Australia 200 US S&P 500 UK 100 Japan 225
The post Macro Afternoon: 7 May 2025 appeared first on MacroBusiness.
Articles from MacroBusiness
Primary tabs
Winning the suburbs is the key to election victory
By Ross Elliott from The Pulse: There’s a great line from the comedy show Kath & Kim, where the very suburban Kim expresses her desire to be like affluent city people. “I want to be effluent Mum,” she says. “You ARE effluent, Kim,” replies the equally suburban Kath. The new political geography of affluent inner
Albo must stop Gasmageddon
This is not good news. The Australian. The EU has unveiled a long-promised plan to phase out its remaining gas imports from Russia by the end of 2027, a challenge given Europe’s continued dependence on Russian fossil fuels. “Today the European Union sends a very clear message to Russia: no more, no more, will we
The bull meets the bear
The Market Ear on a possibe bear market. Very extended The 10-day advance/decline line has gotten very extended. Bespoke: “We would not be surprised to see some downside mean reversion soon”. Source: Bespoke Death cross still in place SPX is hitting some sort of short term trend line here. We moved above the 50 day, but are
Recession-hit Aussies close their wallets
I noted on Monday how “Australian households cannot escape recession”, citing the Q4 2024 ABS national accounts figures showing that real per capita household consumption had fallen for eight consecutive quarters. The decline in consumption follows a record 8% fall in real per capita household incomes. The Q1 2025 retail sales figures also fell in
The bursting of the Green bubble
The Greens’ dream of becoming the ‘third force’ in Australian politics has been eviscerated following Saturday’s federal election. The Greens’ primary vote fell and they lost the lower house seats of Griffith and Brisbane, with vocal housing whinger Max Chandler-Mather booted. As of Wednesday morning, Greens Leader Adam Bandt was trailing Labor’s Sarah Witty 47.3%
Australia’s housing target decimated again
On Tuesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released dwelling approvals data for March, which recorded an 8.8% monthly fall to 15,220 approvals. House approvals fell by 4.5% in March, while unit & apartment approvals fell by 15.1%. Annual approvals rose to 180,740, up 10% on the June 2024 low of 164,254. As illustrated below,
New Zealand’s house price crash steepens
I reported last week on the latest results from Realestate.co.nz, showing that the national average asking price of homes listed on the site declined for the second consecutive month in April to $851,746, down 3.8% from $884,995 in February. The decline in prices was attributed to a growing glut of homes listed for sale, which
A second chance for Jim Chalmers to prevent gasmageddon
JKM LNG futures are still signalling gasmageddon for Australia later this year. Adjusted for an AUD at 70 cents, plus regasification costs, imported LNG will still be coming in at about $19Gj versus $12Gj today. The gas cartel will respond to LNG imports by restricting supply so that global prices become the marginal price setter.
Iron ore enters the danger zone
The ferrous complex is still struggling. Forgive some of the delayed pricing on the chart. SGX is sitting around $96. The latest CISA output data looks more like 2022 than 2024. Though I have to caution that this series has broken down versus official output somewhat this year. The challenges remain. Goldman. The Chinese government’s