The FE complex rebound has stalled: The signals out of China are mixed at best: China’s industrial companies’ profits fell in March as exports flagged and deflationary pressures persisted, suggesting the economy’s stronger-than-expected growth early this year might be tough to maintain. Industrial profits at large-scale Chinese companies declined 3.5% from a year earlier in
CoreLogic’s daily dwelling values index shows that Australian home values at the 5-city aggregate level rose by 0.6% in April, the same rate of growth as in March: As shown above, there was significant divergence between the five major capital city markets, with Perth values surging by 2.0% over the month, whereas Melbourne values declined
New research from Domain shows that the amount of money required for a 20% housing deposit has roughly doubled over the past ten years across Australia’s capital cities: A decade ago, the average deposit for a Sydney home was $158,000, but it has since increased to over $325,000. In 2014, a Melbourne buyer would have
The LNP today discovers the first step of two that will win the next election in a landslide: The Coalition will demand Jim Chalmers cut spending in the May budget to accelerate the nation’s fight against stubbornly high inflation, but trade unions say prices growth has peaked and Labor should instead focus on jobs and
A bit of BOJ intervention has seen epic volatility in Yen today following the spike from last week’s meeting while stocks across the region have all moved higher in line with Wall Street’s rally on Friday night. The Australian dollar continued it lift higher, almost hitting the 66 cent level in afternoon trade. Oil prices
New Zealand’s economy remains in a deepening funk. The economy has already entered a technical recession: And per capita outcomes are significantly worse given New Zealand’s population has grown by 2.7%: Retail spending has dropped considerably in real, population-adjusted terms: New Zealand’s labour market is slowing, with the number of applications per job ad reaching
Goldman with the update. White House Where things stand: President Biden and former President Trump are roughly even in national polling, but Biden trails by around 2pp in the swing state that would currently provide the winning electoral vote. Prediction markets imply a 55% chance of a Democratic win. What has changed: Biden’s lead over
The past 20 years have seen a spectacular rise in cafes across Australia. When I moved to my suburb of Ashburton in Melbourne in 2006, there were maybe four cafes at my local High Street strip shop. Over the following 18 years, I have witnessed the number of cafes swell to absurdity. There are now
Melbourne has started 2024 as Australia’s house price loser. According to CoreLogic’s daily dwelling values index, Melbourne is the only major capital city market to experience price falls, with values falling by 0.3% so far this year, against a 2.1% increase at the 5-city aggregate level: The rolling 28-day time series of value growth is
Australia’s greatest bore, Paul Kelly, wrote a long-winded dirge about inflation on the weekend. It included quotes from all the usual suspects: Warren Hogan (the hawk), Saul Eslake (the dove), and Chris Richardson (the fence sitter). The piece told us precisely nothing other than one sentence: The danger is that inflation may start to stabilise