Australian Economy

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released trade data for the month of December, with Australia’s trade surplus jumping to $3.7 billion in December from $2,3 billion in November: The result smashed expectations of a $2.2 billion surplus.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released retail sales figures for the month of December, which recorded a 0.4% fall in retail sales over the month in seasonally-adjusted terms, with annual sales growth falling to 2.8%: In trend terms, annual retail sales growth fell to 3.2%.

By Leith van Onselen Australian governments’ pretend concern over Australia’s universally weak wages growth (see above chart) has been exposed again, with the NSW Government explicitly mandating that the winning bidder for its Roads and Maritime Services IT contract – Indian outsourcer Wipro – employ 30% of its workers from India to keep costs low.

From the AIG: Business-oriented services sectors: The only business-oriented sector of the Australian PSI® to expand in January was property & business services, which improved slightly from December.

Via Damien Boey at Credit Suisse: We have updated our proprietary activity tracker from our recent article “Positioning for RBA forecast downgrades” dated 30 January 2019.

By Leith van Onselen It is considered unlikely that any free trade deal between Australia and Indonesia will be signed before the federal election.

Via the Melbourne Institute comes another new year shocker with headline inflation at -0.1% month on month and year on year slumping to 1.5% from 1.9%: Trimmed mean tumbled from 1.8% to 1.4%.

BLD is today’s housing economy domino: Always blame the weather.

By Leith van Onselen If you want a textbook example of why Australia’s ‘skilled’ visa program is a giant fraud, look no further than the special pleading coming from Telstra CEO, Andy Penn, who has demanded the government leave the gates wide open for companies to employ foreign workers.

Via The Australian: China has restricted imports of Australian coking coal at up to a dozen ports in the northeast in a move that may hamper the ­nation’s biggest export market amid high prices for the raw commodity.

It is not raining on the Aussie economy right now, it is pouring.

Via CoreLogic comes the full January house price report: The first month of the New Year has seen a continuation in the broad-based housing market weakness with every capital city apart from Canberra recording a month-on-month fall in dwelling values.

Missed this yesterday.

Via AIG: To be expected given the recent swoon.

Via Westpac’s superb Red Book: ― Our CSI± composite combines subindexes tracking views on ‘family fi nances’ and ‘time to buy a major item’ with the Westpac Consumer Risk Aversion Index and provides a good guide to spending with a lead of about 6mths.

Via WBC CEO, Brian Hartzer at the AFR: “Let’s be clear: we want to lend.

The terrible Brazilian mining tragedy that has iron ore prices running wild is something of a Black Swan event for Australia.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for the December quarter 0f 2018, which registered both soft headline and underlying inflation.

The ABS is out with Dec QTR CPI and it’s still weak: The headline was slightly above consensus so markets got excited but analytical series are all about as scary as facing Phil Lowe in a fist fight.

The AUD is still stuck in the mid 71s this morning: Bonds are well bid still and trending towards rate cuts: XJO is up solidly: Led by an outrageous mining party as Vale counts its dead.