Macro Afternoon

By in Australian Dollar, Australian Shares

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See the latest Australian dollar analysis here:

Macro Afternoon

Asian stock markets are quite mixed as we head towards the end of the trading week due to the very mixed results  on Wall Street and European shares overnight. The USD is continuing its retreat against risk currencies although Euro is pulling back slightly coming into the London session, while the Australian dollar remains well above the 71 cent level. Meanwhile gold is unchanged, still flat for the week as it unable to pushing through the $1790USD per ounce level as Bitcoin continues to deflate, now retracing below the $50K level as short term momentum reverts back to the medium term downtrend:

Mainland Chinese shares liked the inflation print with the Shanghai Composite closing more than 1% higher at 3678 points while the Hang Seng Index has put in a similar session to get back on track, up 1% at 24232 points. Japanese markets are pulling back slightly with the Nikkei 225 closing 0.3% lower at 28781 points with the USDJPY pair remaining relatively firm here at just above the mid 113 level with no new session lows, but still just below trailing short term resistance:

Australian stocks followed the Japanese lead, with the ASX200 retracing just under 0.3% to be back below the 7400 point level as the Australian dollar continues to extend its strong move above the 71 handle after clearing last week’s intrasession high overnight:

Eurostoxx futures and S&P futures are stalled here going into the London open, with the S&P500 four hourly chart showing price coming up against key 4700 point resistance level that needs to be cleared to call this Omicron led dip over:

The economic calendar tonight includes German trade balance and US initial weekly jobless claims.

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Comments

  2. C'est de la folieMEMBER

    An earlier rant from Dave’s piece vis Scomo and his party of Liars ……

    Should decant for a pleasurable evening gargle

    Atop this steaming pile sits the most religious Cabinet of my lifetime. Are these two facts related? Maybe. This is how cults work, promoting the pathological over the reasoned, lifting the limited while driving out the able. Specialising in hypocrisy.

    Of course the other great unmentionable here is that the vast bulk of contemporary management has become a cult.  Almost always a cult of personality at the very top of our public sectors (State and Federal) and our large banks and large corporates.  All thriving in the absence of economic competition or public accountability.  All making hay while the era of zero interest money shines and feasting on an ever widening gap between their exhortations and the lived experiences of their clients and workforces.  All filling that gap with an endless stream of exhortations which they tell us are benefitting our lives but benefit primarily theirs.

    The cult is about promoting the survival of the cult – it is not about notions as abstruse as competitive companies or efficient use of public resources to promote societally beneficial outcomes.  At the top of the cult are the beneficiaries.  The politicians able to shove an ideology down the electorates throat, while ignoring the lived experience – taking the payoff with the politico salaries and the public funded perquisites and pensions.  The executive levels of the public sectors – and the source of the Robodebts, the failed census’ the abuse of contract labour in the public sector, the contracting out amidst claims of a lean public sector while inefficiently abusing the public purse through contracting, the bullying, the great unspoken [costing zillions more in contracts for communications and staff and client surveys] and the whiteboards and rorting of public funds – taking the payoff with the public sector executive salaries and the public funded perquisites and pensions.  The private sector corporate executives – bloating uncompetitive companies with casualised and temporary employees while exhorting the population Ponzi and harvesting people and avoiding the world of competition like the plague.  In that world the focus is all about behaviours and away from anything looking like data or mathematics or logic and accurate reporting.

    The cult of course has the funds, and the cult of course creates ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ but it’s all a bit like the US backed administration in Afghanistan.  The integrity of the cult becomes more important than any mission.  Little transgressions get swept under the carpet. Profiteering carpetbaggers become ‘allies’ and the whole focus for everyone involved becomes ‘just make sure I get out of this OK, and if I can pocket a bauble on the way then I’m not doing anything everyone else isnt.’ The mission vagueness, the contractors, the increasingly expensive operations, any atrocities, and the increasingly unaccountable costs – all fuelled by increasingly strident exhortations and missives through any known communication channels to the effect that not only is all good but that all is only getting better. 

    And all the while the punters on the ground – be they staff or clients or ‘investors’ or any form of ‘stakeholder’ – feel that the sheer unaccountability and the sheer level of exhortation of that other than the lived experience, and the sheer lack of respect accorded their actual concerns while the sheer volume of verbiage expressing or exhorting concern about that which isn’t part of their lived experience fuels a pervasive disenchantment and disengagement from whatever it was that brought them there in the first place and an increasing disenchantment with the whole process (or sh*tshow). Good people say ‘this is bull’ and walk away from careers or aspirations and simply settle down for what they half hope is a reckoning of sorts with as good as they can get for their families and themselves without buying into the increasingly pernicious behaviours being floated about at any given level of society by ‘leaders’ becoming ever more grotesque, and ever less credible with ordinary everyday people.

    Then one day there is some sort of report of some revolt about something somewhere far away.  And the next day it’s all a whole heap closer.  And the day after that its all about who can get to the airport on time and who has their seats booked – or who gets the contract payout or the redundancy.

    The apogee has passed for a lot of this.  The era of unending unearned proceeds just from harvesting what may once have been seen as some form of ‘greater good’ or a social impulse or cause, will focus more clearly on return to investment and outcome for outlay as the world moves from endless supply of meaningless money created to prevent markets collapsing and the inwardly focussed domestic economy this has fuelled in Australia and the wealth and status earned from other than economic endeavour that this has enabled.

    For sure there will be many of these psychopaths get away with golden parachutes of some description or another in the period to come and for some time yet.  But the risks for them all of putting a foot wrong and the potential costs to themselves from having been outed for doing so is climbing already. It might be a public examination of the banks, or the value of ever rising house prices. Maybe it will be the antiseptic of public awareness of just how ugly public sector contracting and labour hire has become. Or is there another epic public policy failing waiting in the wings? Could a University sector which has vomited academic positions as a response to Covid after a decade binge drinking on foreign students expose just another morsel of profound national interest failure? Could another surge in house prices or energy costs blow up the last vestiges of ‘elite’ credibility. Could a rejuvenated Population Ponzi light the fuse on public discontent? Could a rejuvenated Population Ponzi light the fuse on public discontent? Could a global community looking to get medieval on carbon generators stick a white hot poker up a nation doing nothing but generating carbon and doing sweet FA about it?

    Yes it is the current government, but more so it is that section of our world which would consider itself ‘elite’ – it is all a cult.

    • Know IdeaMEMBER

      Quite coincidentally I read today in “The Gulag Archipelago” where Solzhenitsyn was pondering how the cult of personality had taken hold in the 1940’s in Russia. The parallels with our own trajectory are not comforting.

    • skippy

      I think the term your looking for is Proselytizing and its a form of – Agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of deliberate, culturally-induced ignorance or doubt, typically to sell a product or win favour, particularly through the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.

      • C'est de la folieMEMBER

        ‘Proselytizing’ is precisely what it is

        The FOMO of the housing market, the tiny houses, and ‘first step on the ladder’, then onto the ‘in demand skills’ of the Population Ponzi or the ‘who will pay the pensions of tomorrow’ or even the ‘education is one of our most valuable exports’ kind of thinking.

        But there are far more pernicious examples, including the ‘property doubles ever seven years’ or the ‘carbon pricing is a tax’ or on to the ‘I have the right to receive refunds on taxes I havent paid’ or the ‘my superannuation stash is mine all mine and I have the right to slice it so I continue to access the public pension’ kind of thinking. Or even societally deforming ‘private sector good – public sector bad’ dullardry.

        But I think that Proselytizing has reached its zenith with the ‘toxic masculinity’ blame apportionment and accompanying fairly open discrimination against men who for the most part have never laid a finger on anyone their entire lives decisionmaking seen in the public sectors. That is where the ‘elites’ have cut adrift a section of society which will return to haunt them.

        • skippy

          ‘toxic masculinity’ distractions to keep the unwashed befuddled, BTW the *** self *** funded retirement tropes/memes has a lot to do with the rest with the running the Government as a Business seeking investment for good measure.

  3. Mining BoganMEMBER

    Our WuFlu spreader at work has claimed another victim. That’s four. Poor sod only started there three weeks ago and got struck out by an arsehole. Still no word on why he did it.

    Anyhow, now I’m paranoid. Tested negative and doing those quick tests every morning but not game to go out, even cancelled training twice because I don’t want to infect anyone. Jack the Dog is enjoying the company though.

    And speaking of great violence, the most mild-mannered of all wants to kill the arsehole. Seems on the day we all found out about the unpleasantness he had to take his 80-year-old father to hospital for some cancer treatment. He’s wandering through a cancer ward not knowing he had been exposed. He wants to strap the arsehole to the front of his car and drive through a few barbed wire fences. That’s genius actually.

    Statements are being taken. Think he’s getting sacked before anyone can grab him.

  5. LSWCHPMEMBER

    Confirmed case at my partners workplace today. As they have almost all been WFH with only essential staff on site, this may be a bit of a blow. Return to the office for ll staff delayed until sometime in 2022.

    I should note that her employer has a vaccine mandate in place, so I presume the sick person was double vaxed. LoL.

    • C'est de la folieMEMBER

      Just imagine all those vaccine mandates which by next May will be reliant on people limbering up for their fourth jab……….

      Wait until May ScoMo – the first triple vaccinated people going down should really heat up public anger. Just imagine being a Liberal sitting member doing a meet and greet with the punterariat after having touted the ‘We need to learn to live with it’ line and egged on the anti lockdown set.

      Maybe I should rename the party once touted as Bullshit Australia into

      ‘ToryGobbers’

      • The Traveling Wilbur 🙉🙈🙊

        Most of us double-jabbed Qld’ers will only be eligible for their FIRST booster then. Thanks to your wonderful Federal Government.

        You’re welcome NSW and Vic. You’re welcome.

        • skippy

          Just want to reiterate that boosters that are not designed for any new strain are of little use or value. I mean you blokes did look at the amount of mutations Omicron has vs Delta right – ???? – its manifold. BTW I would think some would understand the Scientific risk failure percentage allowable in any critical application and how that translates to how things have been administered to date by some.

          • GavinMEMBER

            Data so far seems to suggest Omicron is not as severe. But it’s still early data. And seems existing vaccines still reduce severity if you do catch the latest variant.

          • skippy

            The data I see suggest no such thing Gav, nor does the medical information predating Covid19, you must remember the lag time involved – see same dynamic with delta e.g. once the spike was apparent it was too late. Then again why do you think the U.K. and EU country’s are freaking out.

          • GavinMEMBER

            Well I said shut the borders early, for precisely this reason. But I’ve been looking at as much data as I can to see if this variant will be worse. I’ll check your article out below.

    • FUDINTHENUD

      You’d be spewin’ if you tested positive before chrissy.. Unless yer a psycho and wouldn’t tell the family and rocked up anyway 😜

  8. LSWCHPMEMBER

    Advice from the ACT gummint today that Vax boosters are available for people who had their last jab 6 months ago.

    This is interesting, because vaccine efficacy starts to decline after 3 months, and is almost non-existent after 6 months. The poms are going for jab 3 at 3 months to sustain the effect, rather than letting it fade away and then boost, which is the sensible thing if you’re that way inclined. I suspect there will be many people thinking they’re “vaccinated” and therefore protected who will actually be very vulnerable to catching and spreading the bug as we head into autumn next year.

    Unfortunately, my partner, who got jabbed in September, will be one of them. 🙁

    • Swampy

      Isn’t the decline in protection a function of, amongst other things, the spacing of your doses? I recall reading (citation required ), AZ at 12 weeks (same for Pfizer) confers protection at about 76% after 12-14 months cf. at 6-12 weeks (Pfizer-Az respectively ).

      Wonder how far away the Pfizer and Moderna reconfigured doses are away and how Novavax will go against Omicron.

      Also theBrace trial is getting ready to undertake analysis of the BCG TB vaccine on Covid

  11. LSWCHPMEMBER

    UK gummint advice about vaxing 12-15 year olds:

    “The absolute advantage to being vaccinated in this age group is therefore small (‘marginal’) in the view of the JCVI”.

    This is after stating a few months ago that

    “….there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms.”….of vaxing kids.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-vaccination-of-children-and-young-people-aged-12-to-15-years-against-covid-19/universal-vaccination-of-children-and-young-people-aged-12-to-15-years-against-covid-19

      • Frostilicus

        Let’s hope the title of ScoMo’s memoirs (as narrated from a small cell by Merdejiklian’s soothing voice).

        Spoiler alert, he died with a falafel in his hand. Between the loo seat and the wall.

    • FUDINTHENUD

      Meanwhile in Denmark.. Where they removed all restrictions except entry requirements in september:

      “Associated Press are carrying this update on the latest situation in Denmark, where the government has decided that school students up to the 10th grade must study remotely for the last few days before Christmas and ordered nightclubs, bars and restaurants to close at midnight in an attempt to counter an uptick in cases.

      Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen also recommended that people work from home, banned concerts with more than 50 people standing, and ordered people to wear face masks in eateries when not seated.

      The measures apply as of Friday and are set to last for four weeks.

      Speaking of the omicron variant, Frederiksen said that it is “expected that this will mean more infected, more sick and thus potentially more hospitalized patients. Thus, the new variant also entails a significant risk of critically overloading the health service, and that is why we now have to do more.”

      It’s the same govvy there who went from full open to full Rtard.

  18. banana man

    Is it ok to label myself vax free, lite the ‘gluten free’ stuff? I’m not anti gluten, mind you.

  19. The Travelling PhantomMEMBER

    Always have a pair of gloves in your pocket, in case you’re forced to examine another guys balls. You have them ready!