Iron ore prices for December 14, 2018: Spot up. Paper up. Steel up. There’s nothing the iron ore Costanza market likes more than crashing Chinese demand data. That’s how conditioned it is to stimulus these days. My outlook is unchanged. Strength through new year and January then weakness as demand falls away. I don’t think
DXY was strong Friday night and it looks primed for a break out. EUR and CNY were weak: AUD was hosed across developed markets: EMs were even worse: Shorts continued to pull out of AUD last week, now down to -46k contracts: Gold was soft: And oil: Plus base metals: Big miners fell: EM stocks
In good news for Australia, last week’s break into the open of RBA corruption met with little media response on the weekend. By that I do not mean that the media held the bank to account for endorsing criminal mortgages – as if – but it didn’t pile in behind the bank’s lunatic push to
Via The UNZ Review: So it appears the privatization of France isn’t going quite as smoothly as planned. As I assume you are aware, for over a month now, the gilets jaunes (or “yellow vests”), a multiplicitous, leaderless, extremely pissed off, confederation of working class persons, have been conducting a series of lively protests in
Via Nature: Policymakers have less time to respond than they thought. Governments need to invest even more urgently in schemes that protect homes from floods and fires and help people to manage heat stress (especially older individuals and those living in poverty). Nations need to make their forests and farms more resilient to droughts, and
Chinese new home prices out on the weekend and the bifurcated market continues. Monthly values were up 0.9% and yearly by 9.6%: Here’s the raw data: First tier cities are becalmed but below that it is all still gogo: 63 out of 70 cities are rising: Which has set up an unusual divergence between house
Via John Adams, regular contributor to Martin North: Dear All, Economic Armageddon is no joke and if the past week has taught me something it is that warning the public of the coming economic peril comes at great risk to people like me. Only in the past month, I was approached by a leading national
Via the excellent Bill Evans at Westpac today: What do our economic forecasts for 2019 mean for Investors? Our key economic themes are: Australian economy and markets • Growth in the Australian economy will slow in 2019 under the weight of political uncertainty; falling house prices; a contraction in residential construction; global volatility; and a
The world’s second largest economy has a problem. A big problem. Everything is slowing fast except the very thing that is wants to stop: building empty apartments! November data was bad. Industrial production slowed sharply to 5.4% and retail sales did as well to 8.1%. Fixed asset investment held up at 5.9%: Fixed asset investment
Via Westpac: At the December ECB meeting, the Governing Council confirmed the end of net asset purchases and repeated the forward guidance that key policy rates will remain on hold “at least through the summer of 2019, and in any case for as long as necessary”. In addition, they gave forward guidance on their reinvestment
Via Domain: The proposed CIC will be split in two. At the top tier, a ‘‘law enforcement division’’ will have powers roughly on par with the powerful NSW ICAC. Yet a federal Eddie Obeid would have nothing to fear from this body. Parliamentarians and their staff, along with most of the public service and government-owned
Just in case you were wondering: More out of cycle rate hikes in 3,2,1…
Via The Australian: West Australian Labor MP Pierre Yang’s political mentor, influential Perth businessman Edward Zhang, is a member of five China-based organisations directly run by the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful United Front bureaucracy. …The Australian revealed last week that Mr Yang, the McGowan government’s upper-house whip, was a member of two pro-Beijing organisations that
The AUD is soft through the morning as markets muscle the RBA back into its padded cell: XJO has turned former support into resistance very quickly: Bonds are bid again: Big Iron is mixed: Big Gas up: Big Gold down: Big Banks are sagging: And Big Realty getting the treatment: Avagoodweekend!
APRA released it quarterly ADI property exposures yesterday and banks continue to defuse the interest-only time bomb. IO was only 16% of mortgage flows at $14.4bn: And the stock outstanding IO loans fell sharply again to 26% of the book or $434bn: This is down from a balance of $542bn when macroprudential 2.0 began. It’s
Oh yes, via Bloomie: In the bond market, the yield curve for overnight index swaps — a gauge of expectations for short-term rates — has inverted, showing that traders expect the RBA’s cash rate to be slightly lower than the current 1.5 per cent in a year’s time. Similarly, the cash-rate futures market is now
From the CBA: Growth was maintained in the Australian private sector during December, but signs of softer demand were evident across both the manufacturing and service sectors. New orders increased at the slowest pace in four months, with output growth and job creation slowing accordingly. Meanwhile, business sentiment was at a two-and-a-half year low. There
Via the AFR: Chinese developer Forise is tossing up taking on a joint venture partner for its $1.2 billion high-rise luxury residential tower “Spirit” in Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast, or sell the site altogether, as it struggles to sell apartments. …The DBI-designed Spirit 89 storey tower with 479 apartments is currently on the
Yes, it’s back. The east coast gas cartel is once again charging Australians more for their own gas than the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans or anybody else that happens along. Via the FT: Liquefied natural gas prices in Asia have hit a six-month low as warmer than normal winter weather and forward buying by Chinese importers
Via SCMP: Workers outfitted in uniforms staff lines producing sophisticated equipment for telecommunication and other industrial sectors. But there’s one big difference – the workers wear caps to monitor their brainwaves, data that management then uses to adjust the pace of production and redesign workflows, according to the company. The company said it could increase
Iron ore prices for December 13, 2018: Everything up on seasonal strength. No surprises here. Prices should stay strong until February.
The politico-housing swamp has entered a corruption blow-off. One doesn’t need to be Albert Einstein to see why. House price falls are steepening and the panic in official circles is mushrooming. This week saw two extraordinary events that illustrate the circling of the wagons among the ruling class. The first was the COAG meeting which
As John Kehoe observes today: The RBA’s fingerprints are all over the CFR statement, which says “an overly cautious approach by some lenders to incorporating relevant laws and standards into loan approval processes may be affecting lending decisions”. The result is that the bond market has gotten hosed today as it mulls whether the RBA can
Via Domain: ExxonMobil has made a final investment decision on its Bass Strait gas project, which will bring more gas to Victoria in the next five years. The decision backing the West Barracouta field, located off Victoria’s shores, boosts ExxonMobil’s Gippsland Basin output. Exxon did not disclose the volumes but this gas is not for
Another one bites the dust: Shares hammered but wider realty stocks fine because it is only MOC don’t you know:
Via Westpac: • The Treasurer will release the Federal Government’s MidYear Economic & Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) on Monday of next week, December 17. • The update will reveal an improved budget position – largely higher tax revenue – on stronger national income growth, a robust labour market and, to date, an undershoot on expenditures. •
Via the ABC: ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott and other senior managers have been implicated for the first time in the interest rate rigging scandal that rocked Australia’s financial system. The details are outlined in a tranche of court documents obtained by the ABC that were quietly filed by the corporate regulator shortly before a
These guys really are just too much: Quarterly Statement by the Council of Financial Regulators As part of its commitment to transparency, the Council of Financial Regulators (the Council) has decided to publish a statement following each of its regular quarterly meetings. This is the first such statement. The statement will outline the main issues
DXY was down last night, EUR and CNY up: The Australian dollar fell across the board: Gold was firm: Oil weak: Metals in the middle: Miners up: And EM stocks: Junk was mixed: Treasuries sold: And bunds: Stocks are struggling to rally: Westpac has the wrap: Event Wrap US consumer prices were steady in November, lower
“No” is the short answer, via Calculated Risk: Last Friday, Professor Robert Shiller wrote in the NY Times: The Housing Boom Is Already Gigantic. How Long Can It Last? We are, once again, experiencing one of the greatest housing booms in United States history. How long this will last and where it is heading next are
