Macro Afternoon

By in Australian Dollar, Australian Shares

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See the latest Australian dollar analysis here:

Macro Afternoon

Kayaking in the Cook Islands, 2019: Photo by H. Becker

Most Asian stock markets are struggling to find direction today after the tepid sessions on Wall Street overnight as traders remained confused to the response of the latest US unemployment print.  Bitcoin is still relatively steady at the $19200 level, while gold has leapt to a two week high, finally back above its pre-breakdown levels above $1860USD per ounce:

The Shanghai Composite is struggling to stay in the green, currently up a handful of points going into the close at 3418 points while in Hong Kong the Hang Seng Index is down by nearly 0.5% to 26363 points. Japanese stock markets are also moving nowhere again, this time with the Nikkei 225 finishing about 0.1% lower to 26513 points while the USDJPY pair is struggling to stabilise after its big roundtrip overnight, currently hovering just on the 104 handle:

The ASX200 was able to eke out a minor gain, lifting 0.2% to finish at 6687 points while the Australian dollar has stalled out once again, still holding above the 74 handle but looking somewhat overstretched:

 

Eurostoxx and S&P futures are pulling back again to be below the Monday opening levels as momentum wanes on the four hourly chart of the S&P500 from its recent historical high:

The economic calendar ramps up with Eurowide 3Q GDP plus the closely watched German ZEW survey.

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Comments

    • NikoMEMBER

      It’s hard to tell if gold is turning around or if this spike will be short lived. If gold continues to go up then silver will tag along.
      I’d say US will be forced to stimulate lot more than they wanted due to second wave. So will EU. This looks positive for gold as long as real rates stay flat or negative.

      • Virgin Premier

        You want to be in industrial metals if you want to make money. I think 200-400% gains are realistic over the coming years.

        • NikoMEMBER

          only hold 1 pure gold miner and rest are gold/copper and gold/zinc/lead/copper/silver. And 2 explorers and both are copper/gold and gold/silver/copper/zinc/lead.

          • Fishing72

            What do you reckon about VRX silica ?

            I got out in February ( with profit ) when I saw the world was about to dirty it’s nappy. Of course I missed the huge buy in opportunity in March but I’m not clever or brave enough for that kind of action. Anyway ….it may hold promise. World class resource of pure silica.

            What do you reckon . Could still be an opportunity akin to Popcod’s fortunate flurry ?

          • Popcod

            @fishing72. All I can say about VRX is that they were a recommended stock in a cyclical subscription newsletter a while ago that focused on silica for a medium/long-term play. I didn’t pay attention to it at the time (no spare money or energy) but I’ve recently been thinking it is something I should at least read about (and then consider whether or not it goes onto the watch list for an opportune drop) given that their real estate cycle predictions seem to be spot on.

          • NikoMEMBER

            I know nothing about the company.. but I am interested. May do some research on the weekend.

            Was looking to buy some ILU few weeks ago and changed my mind.

          • MerdoMEMBER

            Silica is on a similar path as asbestos. There are single and class action lawsuits either in force or ready to pop up left right and centre. Google “Silica class action” and the big plaintiff lawyers appear asking for clients to join. Because of joint and several liability, these lawsuits are likely to join every man and his dog knowing they only need one solvent defendant to wear 1% of the liability and the whole of their claim will be borne by that company. Insurance limits may not be enough if a policy can even be found from decades ago.

            May not be the same volume of victims as asbestosis but there’s a lot of unknown unknowns around this as a risk. Short term might be safe as this should take years to play out.

        • xpjsxMEMBER

          So according to you (and the entire market) we are headed to a ‘Goldilocks’ type scenario? Low interest rates, low inflation, and high growth? Wish I could be so optimistic.

          • Mining BoganMEMBER

            Well, once upon a time nobody thought you’d get high unemployment, high interest rates and high inflation together, but Howard the Rodent got there.

            There’s no limits to what you can do with a free market if you meddle with it enough.

  6. The BurbWatcherMEMBER

    Hmmm…USD/JPY looks like it’s wedging or coiling for something….either break up or break down, with larger implications, surely.

    What do people think is going on?

    • NikoMEMBER

      if markets start to fall, I think USD will go up against everything. Gold may follow or fall for short period but will follow USD up. I am more leaning towards gold to gp up along with USD but USD up against rest of the fiats.

      • xpjsxMEMBER

        Hi Brent Johnson of Santiago capital. I have a question. All other fiat devalues vs gold and usd I understand but do you think gold devalues vs usd short term or usd devalues vs gold.

    • ColinMEMBER

      It’s one I can’t gel with. Just when I think I’ve got it’s number it bites.

      They’re also 2 on the same side of a matrix I use for risk on/off.

  7. HixtarMEMBER

    Had a call from a property valuer on Sunday arvo (?) wanting to come and do a valuation on the home we’re set to buy off our landlord. He asked if Monday was good. Told him that it wasn’t a good time, can you do Wednesday?

    Bloke says he’ll call me back, but never did. Thought it strange. I wonder if he’s decided just to do a desktop valuation given the low risk (80% LVR)?

  8. [email protected]

    Some clowns that can’t drive crashed on Newmarket Road, Brisbane and totally ruined my drive home. Pulled into the shops and now drinking bourbon cans in the car til the traffic calms down. Sometimes quitting is the best option lol

  9. TailorTrashMEMBER

    The shearer’s lament
    Friday too tired
    Saturday too drunk
    Sunday too far away

    Just spent a week in the country and had an interesting conversation with a shearer ( how often do you get to do that …priceless )

    Told me of his distain for the young cockies who inherited via their fathers and grandfathers 3000 acres , drive a brand new Toyota and dress in his words “in a polo shirt with up turned collar , clean mole skins and RM Williams boots ……and try to cheat him out of a few sheep shorn at the count at $3.30 each and when it comes to pay him they send two cheque’s for $450 instead of one for $900 as it let’s them avoid having to pay his super .

    Not sure what to make of that but for some living off the sheep’s back is hard indeed .

    • [email protected]

      All that boarding school education starting to pay off. I get the feeling a lot of cheapskate “upper class” folk farmed their kids off to the cheaper, less central private schools over the last 20 years and these landed gentry just got socialised with that type and mentality.

    • ColinMEMBER

      Dunno about the pay bit, but the rest fits a general stereotype of private school boys returning to the farm (not all of course).
      Don’t let your kids grow up to be shearers – It’s Seriously HARD YAKKA! More genuinely bad backs there than in those suburbs on the bankstown line.

      • TailorTrashMEMBER

        In another life I remember a medical term noted as
        LMBS that appeared in many a medical report
        prior to today’s correct times ….
        ..lower Mediterranean back syndrome ….. ….none of them ever did the back breaking work of shearing a sheep ….

        • ErmingtonPlumbingMEMBER

          I got a mate who worked for an Italian industrial glazing company in the late 90s.
          He ended up getting 200k for his “lower Mediterranean back syndrome” (He’s actually an Anglo/Canadian) after an injury causing incident at work.

          While waiting for a delivery truck to arrive with several other colleagues, all sitting along a timber plank balanced on bricks, one of his work associates stood up and turned his buttocks towards my Friends head, to within only a few inches, and proceeded to emit a large, wet sounding fart.
          In the process of attempting to escape this attack my mate moved too quickly in the opposite direction, twisting his back and causing an on going back pain problem.
          I found it hilarious that all this was transcribed and repeated a number of times in court.

          I visited him in Hospital the day of his injury and for at least 15 mins thought he was taking the Piss, when we went outside for him to have a smoke, as he walked up the corridors completely bent over at the waist at almost 90 degrees!

    • ErmingtonPlumbingMEMBER

      Seems them English still hold the Irish in the same esteem they always have by using them as first test guinea pigs before exposing the rest of Britian to this vaccine.

  12. Jake Gittes

    This study explores the public understanding of economics and economics statistics, through mixed-methods research with the UK public, including 12 focus groups with 130 participants and a nationally representative survey with 1,665 respondents.

    https://escoe-website.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/26140838/ESCoE-OP03-Public-Understanding-of-Economics-and-Economic-Statistics-V1.pdf

    It shows that people generally understand economic issues through the lens of their familiar personal economy rather than the abstract national economy. The research shows that large parts of the UK public have misperceptions about how economic figures, such as the unemployment and inflation rate, are collected and measured, and who they are produced and published by. This sometimes affected participants’ subsequent views of the perceived accuracy and reliability of economic statistics. Broadly, the focus groups suggested that people are often sceptical and cynical about any data they see, and that official economic data are subject to the same public scrutiny as any other data.

  13. migtronixMEMBER

    Brian Griffin is the best:

    “and here are some pictures of cats wives can shove in their husbands faces so they never ever sleep”

  14. [email protected]

    @Totes @Stewie, come to the main thread if ya wanna keep at it. I don’t have the brain power to be across two threads, I’m not as smart as you guys /s

    Lol get fd ya muppets

      • [email protected]

        I know, I know, I shouldn’t be ruining it for everyone but I just find it so bizarre that they float all these arguments in barely populated threads and yet remain absent from the main show. Almost like they can’t handle the full community critical thought….

        • Totes BeWoke

          “you’re brain is too disordered”…..

          …”@Totes I genuinely made a spelling error and not only did you not pick it up you reposted it. Bahahahaha”…

          Do you know what a quote is?

          • [email protected]

            As fkn if you wouldn’t have called that if you’d noticed it. You didn’t, deal with it “tested genius”. C’mon totes, explain why it’s weird to do no.2s in a cubicle next to a chick. Cmon man, you can do it.

            Also, where’s them excerpts from that book? C’mon man, you can do it. I believe in you lol

  17. DivyaMEMBER

    Reviews of products from amazon these days have comments stating if a product is not made in china. That’s new.

    • GramusMEMBER

      There are major attitudinal shifts that have occurred towards China. Big shifts, with far reaching consequences that are not yet fully understood or appreciated. We are never going Bnb back to the old days

  19. [email protected]

    To all those idiots that think the ABC is actually a “woke” organisation at its core, it isn’t. That’s all just Ita, Palpatine/Michelin Man sleight of hand to distract you from the real plays that are happening:

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-08/workplace-reforms-collective-bargaining-better-off-overall/12962736

    Stop watching insiders, qanda, whatever you fools usually get your panties in a bunch about. Start applying some fkn critical thinking and see the forest for the trees. Fkn.

    • Stewie GriffinMEMBER

      “Stop watching insiders, qanda, whatever you fools usually get your panties in a bunch about. Start applying some fkn critical thinking and see the forest for the trees. Fkn.”
      Your way with words…. you make Biden seem so articulate and lucid.

        • Stewie GriffinMEMBER

          Oh that – who gives a phuck. The msm is just propoganda and that includes the ABC.

          “In short, Ita has overseen a transition from a Fake Left ABC to a fusion of Fake Left (minorities instead of class) and Fake Right (interests instead of liberalism) resulting in the near-collapse of its loyalty to Australia.”

          DLS’s quote is about right for all the care I actually give about it.

          As to your comment – “missing the real issues the ABC still reports on” is just a broad catch all. If you’d like to elaborate and actually specifically identify a few actual issues you believe they are accurately reporting on then I might be able to opine… but at 11:30pm at night do you really want to?

          I’m tired and most of your gang who you like taking air swings in front of have probably logged off for the night as well. So there is only limited upside for you in carrying on with your hairy chest beating and branch thrashing in terms of building up your self esteem infront of an audience of just me.

          • Stewie GriffinMEMBER

            Yawn – okay my guy, give me those real issues that ABC are accurately reporting on and I’ll be happy to respond for your benefit. A list of them will do, see if you can it get up to ten…

          • [email protected]

            How about you first go up to the first post of mine you responded to in this thread and come good and post all your Peterson/Bible/Fox/Trump is the real winner stuff. And just for good measure repeat it again tomorrow arvo and let’s see how you hold up to real scrutiny, not just that of a drunken bogan.

            I can’t state this any more obviously – I’ve been banging on about it for a bit – all the “woke” identity stuff the ABC has clearly shown an editorial bias for SINCE Ita took over is a smoke screen. The REAL stories they still comment on sparingly are those that most MB people actually care about, excess immigration, loss of local worker rights, disenfranchisement, political corruption, etc. It’s so obvious, yet over and again the same MB posters who say they hate these things above all else fall for the woke smokescreen and spend endless hours railing against the woke ABC without seeing the forest for the trees. This is my tinfoil hat moment, I could be wrong but I fkn doubt it and it’s way more credible than the bible.

            You also totally got the wrong point of what I was saying in that other thread (my 1st semester sociology time) I was explaining the current media landscape through a Durkheimian Utilitarian lense, if you don’t get it that’s cool, if I’m wrong, that’s cool too, I’m an incomplete academic lol. But for me it’s very basic when using that sociological perspective.

            End of the day, you showed your true colours in recent US election, you went from Crypto knowledgeable/somewhat politically literate/scientific raysist to complete buffon in the course of 24 hours in my eyes. Jog on

          • Stewie GriffinMEMBER

            I’m disappointed by not surprised you didn’t stay up for another hour composing a list of 10 examples of where the ABC are playing 4 dimensional chess with the Australian public, cunningly disguising their woke ideology as based ideology, while I went to bed.

            The REAL stories they still comment on sparingly are those that most MB people actually care about, excess immigration, loss of local worker rights, disenfranchisement, political corruption, etc.

            Apart from immigration I would probably agree that the ABC do cover the points you raised above – yet I would add that when they do so they make sure they frame these issues so that none of the problems are in any way pointed to the root cause of the issues – the corrupting effects of mass migration.

            I don’t believe that the media use Durkheimian lens in framing the discussion, because that would require the media to champion the cause of the majority, being existing Australians. The media IMHO are the complete opposite, championing the rights of the minority over the interests of the majority at every turn, and it is this lack of cohesive social narrative for the majority that is feeding into the plague of anomie crushing most young people, and young men in particular today.

            Interesting that you are scoff so readily at any quote from the bible when Durkheim made such reference to both the bible and rabbinical works in his own philosophy. The thing that I find most interesting about Durkheim is that despite his J3wishness, he actually produced a philosophical work that is in many ways is completely opposite to many of the values that Judaism promotes and which often forms my major critique of their cultural influence and antisemitism – being the promotion of the individuals rights over the responsibilities owed towards society.

            As to what I posted in the Ita thread – I have no idea why you want me to repost it here…. what exactly are you hoping to achieve by pressuring me to do so. If it is really given you ants in your pants, why don’t you post a link to it, so all you subservient filter feeders can rush off peruse it and comment on what a great rock lobster you are – that should elevate you somewhat in the hierarchy – well at least in your own mind.

            I really don’t know why you are so obsessed with the fact that someone supported Trump, you are beginning to sound as deluded and disturbed as Mig over this question. The Fox link I provided pretty much 100% justifies my views and opinions on which candidate would have made a better president – but that is just my opinion, which I and many others are entitled to hold.

            If you are going to disagree, then please feel free to disagree on the substance of the allegations made in the video I linked – but if you are just going to disparage it because it is Fox then of course I’m going to mock you. Sure I pay out on Chris Becker for posting CNN stories – but whenever I do I am mocking both the substance of the story they are narrating AND I will provide links and reasons for my disagreeing other than it just being CNN (If I dismissed it because it was purely CNN then that would be a fallacious reason to dismiss information).

            I’m happy to discuss issues or topics with anyone, and will do so with the same cordial respect I try to give in respect of my interlocuter – the fact that I am rude to you stems from your hairy chest beating and branch thrashing. You dismiss comments I make and resources I link to support them (often without even examining them), with little more analysis or contemplation than telling the world as to your feelings over them “That is stupid” “Your are dumb”…. if you want me to respect you and treat your questions with seriousness, instead of mocking you like some 8 year old throwing a tantrum, firstly show a little respect and secondly make a little more effort with your own responses – referencing Durkheim was a good start.

          • Sacha

            Always a gentleman.
            I admire your patience Stewie, I have lost mine…
            You, Dominic, Totes and Boom are about the only ones here that have the intellectual curiosity and bagage required to comment sensibly on a financial/economics blog. Able to put issues in a historical context while not denying human nature.
            Keep up the good work.

          • Stewie GriffinMEMBER

            All good Sascha – if actually find that the most abusive posters are usually those with a big “F” in their decision making process, i.e. they are governed to choose on how they ‘Feel’ about something, as opposed to what they ‘Think’ about a subject. Interesting that while this decision making trait tends to be split 50/50 in the population, within the sexes it is about 60/40 in terms of how men make decision, thinking over feelings, while with women it is the reverse, the majority make decisions based around their feelings.

            This actually leads back to the very first post I made to [email protected] about the issues of changing how a society makes its decision. As he is familiar with Durkheim he would be aware of Durkheim’s opinion or belief in a collective consciousness:

            The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or common consciousness.

            By definition, that collective consciousness would also be applicable in terms of how societal decision making occurs, and in that respect what I have said would be true, if you radically change the composition of how a society collectively makes decisions, by significantly increasing openness, neuroticism and agreeableness, in terms of the decision making participants, than it can profoundly impact the type of society you end up living in.

            As another example take the personality trait of Agreeableness. The paradox of Agreeableness is that this trait not only makes the holder more agreeable, but collectively it makes society demand much higher levels of agreeableness from those within it. Good if you are agreeable, but not so good if you are disagreeable and don’t like to conform.

            Much innovation and free thinking actually arises from disagreeable people, the mere act of thinking ‘outside the box’ requires it as a fundamental necessity. If you look around the west today where is the most violent and disagreeable behaviour coming from? Groups like BLM and AntiFa that DEMAND that people agree with their views and ideas of tolerance, to the point of violence if those who don’t agree with them refuse to acquisend.

          • Sacha

            Thank you for your considered response Stewie.
            I always like to try and look at the bigger picture, not getting too much caught up in the technicalities of a subject as this takes up so much time, rather go straight to the crux of a matter.
            The changing society you are talking about is actively pushed by the UN, IMF, World Bank, big tech, big corporations, academia, schools and most political parties. There is almost no escaping it. It is a pity that we are not willing to learn from the past, as in learn what doesn’t work, but that we have to experience it ourselves and subsequently pay a hefty price for it (again!). “We will do it right this time…” Men’s ego (and forgetfulness) will be his downfall.
            “Silence is violence!” the other side says, so I am forced to pick a side eventually. I always enjoyed having a lot of different experiences in life, the one experience I was hoping I could do without was war, but it seems almost unavoidable now. The only thing I can hope for is that the agenda is now pushed too hard and enough people still have the innate ability to know right from wrong.
            I wish you and yours good luck Stewie.

          • Sacha

            Can’t see anything wrong with my comment so I won’t change it.
            Please stay disagreeable Stewie.