Macro Afternoon

By in Australian Dollar, Australian Shares

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See the latest Australian dollar analysis here:

Macro Afternoon

A bath of blood was avoided in the start to the new trading week here in Asia despite the big falls that has taken Wall Street closer to correction territory on Friday night, coupled with rising tensions over Ukraine/Russia. The USD remains very strong against most of the majors, with the Australian dollar still well below the 72 handle while safe haven buying in Yen has abated somewhat, and gold holds on to its recent uncorrelated strength below the $1840USD per ounce level, but unable to make new daily highs. Meanwhile, the bottom that fell out of Bitcoin on Friday continues to scrape even lower, touching the $35000 level on the reopen:

Mainland Chinese shares are quite resilient, helped by another PBOC interest rate cut with the Shanghai Composite slightly up at 3526 points going into the close, while the Hang Seng Index is pulling back, currently down nearly 1% at 24719 points. Japanese markets finished slightly higher eventually with the Nikkei 225 closing 0.25% higher at 27588 points while the USDJPY pair came back slightly to almost climb above the 114 handle but still very depressed:

Australian stocks had suffered a milder selloff than expected with the ASX200 closing only 0.5% lower but still making a new monthly low at 7139 points, as the Australian dollar remains below the 72 handle as it tries to make a new weekly low as the USD proves too strong:

Eurostoxx and Wall Street futures are trying to build somewhat going into the London open, with the S&P500 four hourly chart showing price trying to maintain its downtrend trend to the September 2021 lows at the 4250 level after taking out all of recent support:

The economic calendar starts the week with a slew of flash manufacturing and services PMI prints on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Comments

      • JasonMEMBER

        Three touchdowns, a two point conversion and a game tying field goal in the last two minutes of regulation!

        • alwaysanonMEMBER

          As a long suffering Buffalo fan (am from there) it was soo heartbreaking to have stuffed up that lead with only 17 seconds left. They haven’t made it this far since the 90s (when we lost 4 Super Bowls in a row) so we are used to disappointment. A drinking town with a football problem.

          • JasonMEMBER

            I can empathise with your pain – my NRL side lost 4 grand finals in 8 years including one with a penalty try on the final siren.

          • Swampy

            Ordinarily this is where Swampy of any MFC supporter before 25/9/2021 could step in and say “Melbourne Football Club” and win any argument like this. It delights me to report I can no longer do that.

            My commiserations. As least you don’t barrack for Collingwood.

          • RobotSenseiMEMBER

            Being a Bills fan seems really fun though. Their fans look fun. They’re due for that breakthrough win. But my goodness, hasn’t Josh Allen blossomed? Two years ago, you’d have said the league missed big in letting Lamar fall to bottom of the first and maybe you’d have second-guessed the Allen pick; now, Mahomes is about the only QB you’d take over him if you were re-drafting the league.

    • RobotSenseiMEMBER

      Best weekend of Divisional games in living memory. KC v Bills was played a week too early:

      Predictions:
      KC v Bengals – Mahomes has that Terminator vibe about him at the moment. Bengals will get undone by the Achilles heel everyone saw in the offseason: rubbish offensive line. Even if Bengals somehow beat Chiefs, they will get demolished by either Rams or 9ers in SuperBowl. Chiefs, 31-17

      Rams v 9ers – Rams are yet to beat 9ers this season. I think it’s all falling together for the Rams – too many star players on both sides of the ball, and hopefully their tackle Whitworth is healthy for this game. Rams running game looked good v Arizona but too many costly turnovers almost allowed Tom Brady to be Tom Brady. If they do that again, they’re toast. Jimmy G is unfortunately Jimmy G. He will have a chance to win it, but he is too limited a QB in the crunch. Rams, 28-24.

      • JasonMEMBER

        If SF wins, Jimmy G would have been to more Superbowls than Rogers!

        Your predictions look good to me – Bengals are probably two years away from being dominant. It’s been an incredible year from them already (including a win over KC).

  5. The Travelling PhantomMEMBER

    Maybe a private investigator can help with the mystery? Or ask ABC to fund a small documentary you’ll make about these mysteries.
    Documentaries can reveal a lot!

      • The Travelling PhantomMEMBER

        I’m quite lost with all the inflation or deflation predictions, I just hope something will materialise in my life time.
        5%-8% interest won’t be bad on my my savings

        • happy valleyMEMBER

          Indeed – I could live reasonably in retirement on that but I think that I would win Lotto before Phil Lowe let’s the cash rate to even 1%. Fvck people living on fixed interest income says the RBA – house prices are all that matter.

  7. dodgy as

    Looks like my comment from earlier disappeared, I made a minor edit and straight to Moderation
    hate it when that happens

      • dodgy as

        I know that not many here are interested in this sort of stuff but Complexity and Connectivity analysis is the future of Economics, so we’d better all get our heads around the methods and what the data is telling us.
        For me the really important question is what’s missing with this methodology that results in Australia getting such terrible Complexity rating. Half the answer appears to be that the methodology only counts physical product exports, so Software and Services are not being properly measured.
        Companies like Atlassian are therefore not considered exporters.

        • The Traveling Wilbur 🙉🙈🙊

          Well I’m intimately interested in those kind of linkages and cause-and-effects. Only reason I didn’t mention that earlier was lack of knowledge re your first subject area (shutup JR). Keep ’em comin’ chapeaux.

        • PalimpsestMEMBER

          So not a very complex indicator. It also means that scientific and health research isn’t counted, so modern Australia comes out about right.

          • dodgy as

            I’m not sure if this is correct, so far I haven’t even glanced at these sectors
            I’m stuck where I started because it just doesn’t add up, something is clearly wrong with the compiled data. I want to sort out these problems before moving forward especially with more difficult to understand sectors like Health and Scientific research (as exports).
            BTW the metric only tries to quantify the complexity of the economy through its exports, if the service is not exported its not relevant. It is essential to understand this because the basic idea is that a local customer has no choice so buys the local product (visits the local GP) whereas an international customer is spoiled for choice and buys the Best (whatever metric defines best for them)

        • Muttafukaburrasaurus.MEMBER

          I like your theory.
          But, Scott’s going to pitch to the can-do capitalists, the type of complexity that would buy a “typo” franchise.

    • BrettMEMBER

      C’mon, they’re gonna make sure there’s a continuous corridor of trees. What could go wrong?

    • TailorTrashMEMBER

      West Dapto …….the next 3 million dollar property hotspot …..garn straya !!

      I have a friend down that way ……he takes a particular delight in describing daptoids …….as he calls them

      All that aside …..the south coast of NSW is paradise on a stick …….but ……we can sell it for a pretty penny ….

        • ErmingtonPlumbingMEMBER

          I cannot hear Dapto being referred to without immediately thinking and saying in a silly boganie/ethnicy voice.
          Dapto dogs mate,…Dapto dogs.
          I think I got it off a mates, girl friends, Maltese father.
          He was a massive bullsh!tter who raced greyhounds and V8 ski boats.
          Me mate broke up with that chick over 30 years ago and I haven’t seen any in the family since.
          Funny the things you remember about people.

          • TailorTrashMEMBER

            I do vaguely remember Norman Gunston referring to Dapto as in the general area of his spiritual home ……….that kind of stuck with me ……I liked him a lot ………

  10. skippy

    In a new filing released this week designed to pressure Trump and two of his children – Ivanka and Donald Jr – into facing questioning, James forensically dissects how such strikingly large valuations came about. The 2011 estimate for the Scottish property, her investigators discovered, included an estimated £75m ($121m at 2011 exchange rates) for undeveloped land at the site.

    Investigating deeper, they found that the figure had been created for an article in Forbes magazine. The revelation prompted a line in this week’s filing that must be among the tartest in US financial history.

    “It thus appears,” James writes, “that the valuation of Trump Aberdeen used for Mr Trump’s financial statement was prepared for purposes of providing information to Forbes magazine in a quote.”

    James’s legal document is packed with similarly juicy titbits. The 2014 value of the Scottish golf club was based in part on the projected sale price of 2,500 houses on the land, even though none of the houses actually existed and the company had planning permission for only half that number.

    In 1995 the Trump Organization bought a parcel of land in Westchester, New York, known as the Seven Springs Estate, for $7.5m. By 2004 it was valued at $80m and by 2014 at $291m. That 2014 figure, James notes in another exquisitely tart reference, included a valuation of $161m for “seven non-existent mansions”.

    The juiciest titbit of all concerns Trump’s former home, the gilded Fifth Avenue temple to his own ego dubbed “Versailles in the sky”, in which he lived before moving into the White House. James’s investigators were puzzled to find the Trump Tower triplex in Manhattan was listed at $327m in 2015, based on the apartment’s size, allegedly 30,000 sq feet.

    In fact the property is 11,000 sq feet, which produces a value of $117m. That’s an overstatement in Trump’s official financial statements of more than $200m. – snip

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/22/donald-trump-legal-perils

    Then again there is a lot of it going around …

  14. Matchbox

    Just a heads up to all; most south china ports are completely backlogged. DHL have stopped all incoming and outbound ships and no guidance on when shipping will resume. With Chinese new year holidays, this is going to be 3-6months to get things flowing again. There is going tobe massive shortages and Inflation is going to go through the roof

  15. The Travelling PhantomMEMBER

    have you guys notices a severe shortage in white goods, 2 of my friends are on months plus waiting list one buying a fridge and the other air con

    • jsMEMBER

      I sew, and about 12-14 months ago, my flash machine needed a repair -16 weeks to get the part for the repair from the importer- normally a few weeks only.
      Eventually I sourced some parts and did it myself, but still took 8 weeks.
      I went and bought another machine as backup, although it still took 16 weeks to arrive.
      I mentioned it to some friends, and about a eight people of my acquaintance went out and bought a backup machine.
      We’ve been replacing or backing up stuff ever since.

    • dodgy as

      I tried to buy some swimming Pool chlorine the other day
      Bunnings was out of the stuff I normally get, the recommended replacement was twice the price and also not in stock. What they had available in the store was 3 times the normal price….
      No Inflation round here, no sir…

        • dodgy as

          “Fresh water Pool”
          Yeah the home swimming pool space has more than its fair share of snake-oil salesmen but imho most are just selling you a dream.
          I have a salt water pool (salt levels around 4 to 6 ppm) and use a Chlorinator to generate the Chlorine that keeps the pool sanitized and algae free. I usually run the Chlorinator to be around 1 to max 2 ppm free Chlorine. This is too little to guarantee that the pool is safe, so once a week I kill whatever might have grown with a big dose of Chlorine overnight (say 10ppm) that’s what I use the store purchased Chlorine for. By the afternoon of the following day all that chlorine is gone. and we’re back at 2ppm. with clean safe water.
          Some pools eliminate Chlorine by using an alternate oxidizer like Ozone or Bromine or or or
          Some pools eliminate Algae by adding Copper Ions and eliminate Bacteria by adding Silver ions, personally I think this is BS. because the last thing I want to do is swim in a heavy metal soup.
          Anyway good luck with your purchase.

          • GingerMEMBER

            Yes, we’re approaching that sort of systemic approach by test and trial. Salt plus chlorine shock as required.

    • TailorTrashMEMBER

      Why does China seem so scared of covid ……do they know something we don’t ……if it’s just a flu why all the heavy handed approach ……seems strange …..

      • steve

        China’s not scared of the virus. This has alreadt been thru China.

        China is scared of the narrative crumbling. If they opened up and millions of Chinese didn’t die, what questions would that pose?

        • Ronin8317MEMBER

          It’s because the Chinese knows their vaccines works as well as the placebo. They will only open up only after they have a working vaccine, not before.

      • Arthur Schopenhauer

        They are using it to restructure their economy, consolidate internal power and cement world influence.

        Meanwhile the US continues to flounder.

        Looks like a winning strategy, for them.

  17. Swampy

    Ride on Mower for me – no one in the Northern Ribersnhas a 38” pressed deck basic ride on. Masport, Husky, John Deere, MTD/Rover. It’s crazy. Unless you want to pay 5k for a 30” Cox (30” Cox more Reusa’s jam I reckon)

    • Frostilicus

      Repeat after me: there’s no such thing as inflation! It’s all transitory!

      Also, told ya’! I’d hate to have to get one now. Bought a Husky 2 years ago, for $1100 with a garden trailer. Seized the engine solid 4 months later (I wasn’t driving it, so not me) so slapped a further $1000 new 25hp B&S in it. Sure, it’s now a $2100 mower, but she does the job! At the time I was looking at options, the prices on second hand mowers were already climbing vertiginously. Engine replacements were, by comparison, cheap as chips.

      I guess the other moral of the story is: take care of your tools, it may be insanely expensive to fix or replace them

      • Swampy

        I have a self prop Honda that does the job just fine especially as we head out of wet season and I don’t need to Mow every 2 days #lawnpride so no rush

        Neighbour bought a second hand John Deere which he summarily killed by trying to mow the over grown lawn (renting from sister) way way way too low

        Fun times!

  18. Goldstandard1MEMBER

    Soooo crypto appears to be pooping again, and shares ready to poop again….. Buying the dip has NOT worked for ALMOST 2 weeks! 🙂 What is the world coming to? Next: interest rates up and property down due to people losing lots (IMO)