Global Macro / Markets / Investing: How a $139 Billion Fund Is Trading the Trade War – Bloomberg Bond markets signal early end to Fed rate rises – FT Amazon’s share of the US e-commerce market is now 49%, or 5% of all retail spend – Tech Crunch Infographic: A Short History of U.S. Trade
By Leith van Onselen Back in March, job search website Adzuna estimated that around one-third Australian jobs could be lost to automation by 2030, with lower-skilled and manual labour jobs most at risk. Now, a new collaboration study between Marsh & McLennan’s Global Risk Centre, Mercer, and Oliver Wyman, estimates that Australian workers, like other nations,
By Leith van Onselen MB has vigorously opposed the Adani Carmichael mega coal mine from the outset on the grounds that: Adani’s own hand-picked economic expert, Jerome Fahrer from ACIL Allen consulting, told the Queensland Land Court that only 1,464 full-time equivalent jobs would be created by the project; The project will create all manner
China has released its June QTR national accounts and it’s some whack numbers. Growth is steady at 6.7%: But the monthly numbers for June is where the action is as internals keep slowing with industrial production at 6%, fixed asset investment at 6% and retail sales at 9%: Infrastructure investment is slowing fast with some
By Leith van Onselen I have explained previously (here, here and here) how the ACT Government deliberately manipulates urban land supply in order to maintain exorbitant land/house prices. Despite having an abundance of developable land, the Government has for a long-time drip-fed supply to the market, maintaining an artificial land shortage (scarcity) and, in the
By Leith van Onselen After penning a Panglossian article last week spruiking the great riches that have come from Australia’s free trade agreements (FTAs), Australia’s trade minister, Steve Ciobo, has indicated that more FTAs are on the horizon. From The AFR: Australia’s growing network of free trade deals is crucial to buffeting the economy against
By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released visitor arrivals and departures data for the month of May, which again posted turbo-charged net annual permanent and long-term arrivals. In the year to May 2018, there were 803,030 permanent and long-term arrivals into Australia – up 4% from May 2017 and an
By Leith van Onselen Industry Super chief economist, Stephen Anthony, penned a detailed article in Fairfax over the weekend warning of a “homelessness epidemic” in Sydney and Melbourne due to the serious lack of affordable and social housing, and offering policy solutions: Australia stands on the precipice of a major social crisis. Industry Super estimates
Via Westpac: The non-mining infrastructure construction sector is a key growth driver of the Australian economy. This includes projects in both the public and private sectors. Here we gauge the current momentum in activity and assess prospects for 2018 and 2019. This is a timely update with the round of annual state budgets now complete
By Leith van Onselen As an Australian parent in 2018, the public versus private school debate is hard to avoid. With two children aged 7 and 10, and living in a fairly affluent area of Melbourne, I am continually asked “which private school will you send your kids to”? When I respond that I am
Via the AFR: Big business, energy companies industry groups have called on the Turnbull government to allow future governments to be able to adjust the emissions reduction target more often than every five years to ensure Australia meets its international climate targets. With the Energy Security Board finalising the design of the National Energy Guarantee
The Australian has been doing some shopping around: Australian banks have been dragging their feet in meeting new rules on home lending, despite regulatory appeals to wean the industry off riskier loans. The Australian understands no major bank has yet been given the green light to grow their property investor lending book above 10 per
By Leith van Onselen While the Turnbull Government and the Business Council of Australia (BCA) continue to push the Senate to lower Australia’s company tax rate to 25% from 30%, on the grounds that it would boost investment and wages, the impact from the recent US corporate tax cuts continues to disappoint, sounding a warning
Via AP: NSW Liberal government MP Daryl Maguire has resigned after he was secretly recorded discussing the potential “dividend” he and a local councillor could reap from the sale of a Sydney property to a giant Chinese developer. More: The New South Wales premier is urging the disgraced state MP Daryl Maguire to reconsider his
Oh to be Jess Irvine. There’s never anything wrong. And then when there is it is in retrospect and it’s fixed! So, are we heading for a big property bust up? It’s unlikely. The entire system – from the structure of our tax system to the role of our regulators – is designed to support
Via the AFR this morning: Australia’s banks will be forced to find an additional $70 billion of funding as superannuation funds shift out of cash into international assets while indebted households draw down on their savings. The widening of the so-called “funding gap”, which measures the difference between bank loans and deposits, comes amid a
Goldman has been terrible. Jeff Gundlach almost as bad. Now Horseman Global’s Russell Clarke joins them: Your fund lost 6.87% last month. Losses came from the long book and currency book. I had thought the big consensus trade in the market was short bonds, and I had moved the fund to be largely neutral with
Via The Australian: Liberal senator Dean Smith is urging Malcolm Turnbull to sanction a wide-ranging Senate inquiry into Australia’s population policy, believing the recent reduction in immigration levels does not go far enough to ease community concerns about population growth. With the national population to hit 25 million next month, the West Australian senator has
Via The Australian, Newspoll still has Labor in front 51/49 but the trend is the Coalition’s friend: Led by unpopular Bill:
Lordy, Paul Kelly needs to change his undies: Donald Trump is unleashed and is changing history. Trump now is implementing what he promised — dismantling the existing global order created by America, punishing its allies for short-changing the US, imposing a new protectionism and deconstructing the governing status quo in Washington. Trump is delivering for
Friday night saw the US dollar index (DXY) pop then drop. EUR and CNY were weak: The idiot EUR long continues its great disappearing act: AUD was stable against developed markets (DMs): Mixed against emerging markets (EMs): CFTC speculative positioning moved marginally shorter at -41k contracts: Gold was soft: And oil: And base metals: And
UBS does a great job today of summing up the dynamics of the people ponzi: Population lifts 1.6% y/y, led by migration of 240k Strong population growth is a key driver of Australia’s world record of 26+ years of GDP growth without recession. Indeed, population growth remained strong in Q4- 2017 at 1.6% y/y (+388k
It’s weird to the point of ideological absurdity. The commitment of The Guardian Australia to its ideology of ‘migrant welfare before all’ is now so extreme that it’s spent the last several days digging up every wages-destroying business blood-sucker it can find to give them a platform against any tightening in visa requirements. No other
The AFR again analysed the key drivers of the bank funding cost spike over the weekend: Geoff Wood, the head of macro and risk at Sydney based hedge fund Morphic Asset Management, said the market now thought the funding costs could remain elevated. He said the major banks faced a choice – “they either reprice
CoreLogic released its auction report yesterday, which reported another fall in the preliminary national auction clearance rate to 55.8% from 55.9% last weekend (later revised down to 52.6%). Sydney’s auction clearance rate was also revised down to 50.1%. The preliminary clearance rate was also way below the 69.4% recorded in the same weekend of last
Jeremy Grantham’s GMO offered a recent presentation talking about climate change and investing at the LSE: http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/the-mythical-peril-of-divesting-from-fossil-fuels/ The main chart that caught my eye was a one on the long-term effect of excluding an entire sector from the index : Basically, my interpretation is that if you decided to exclude an entire sector from your investment
By Leith van Onselen On Friday, I noted how the Australian Treasury is about to become even more politicised following the appointment of former chief of staff to both Treasurers Peter Costello and Scott Morrison, Philip Gaetjens, to the secretary of the Department. Sadly, another esteemed government organisation – the Productivity Commission (PC) – is facing
Iron ore prices for July 13, 2018: Spot flat. Steel firm. Paper flat. Rebar inventories fell 2.1% to 4.57mt, still well above last year and quite adequate. Steel exports held their rebound in June, I’m guessing on OBOR-related flows: Iron ore imports definitely appear to have topped: I reckon there’s a more than even chance
There’s no stopping the slowdown in Chinese credit. In June banks extended RMB1840bn but total aggregate financing fell to just RMB1180bn: The shadow banking share has collapsed: Year on year new loans eased into the positive but the three month moving average remains down: The rolling annual nudged higher: M2 slumped to 8%: Mortgage growth
Global Macro / Markets / Investing: Fiscal hawks’ tales of doom do not fly with the young – FT Fed Could Avert an Inverted Yield Curve. But It Won’t. – Bloomberg Watch out, retailers. This is just how big Amazon is becoming – CNBC The Death of Soda: 11 Slides on Why the Industry Has
