For more than a year now, fears of a housing-led recession have been building in Australia. First, auction clearances fell in a hole, then house price declines, falling credit growth and building approvals, and finally, unemployment began to rise. A month ago, further falls seemed inevitable. Then Australian woke up... Show More
Week in Review The escalation in US-China trade tensions continued to dominate global market sentiment last week, with bond yields dropping lower and equities prices generally pulling back. That said, the fallout from the escalation in trade measures has been contained by continual US assurances that talks are ongoing and a... Show More
For my regular readers, this month’s note is a little different. Briefer with one myopic focus. This month I am going to focus on Australia, and specifically the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). For the first time in over 2 years, we had a very “live” RBA meeting on May... Show More
While China's recent injections of liquidity into the system have got the economy going and recent purchasing managers' prints have also provided support to the market, it will now be important to see money continue to flow from the banking system into the broader economy. In this video, Matthew Haupt... Show More
On 18 May, Australian citizens over the age of 18 will be required to vote to elect members of the 46th Parliament of Australia. As always, there is a chance of a change in government. Indeed, this time around, that chance appears meaningful. Whether one consults Newspoll surveys or the... Show More
It’s a rare opportunity to get to sit down with an economist of the calibre of Tim Toohey from Ellerston Capital. He was formerly the Managing Director, Chief Economist, and Head of Macro Strategy for Australia and New Zealand at Goldman Sachs, where he earned a reputation as one of... Show More
The Australian dollar has emerged a little stronger after a very busy week. Most of the headlines were positive, with the one real negative coming from the RBA. While there was no surprise in the steady hand on the cash rate at 1.5% or in much of the language of... Show More
The Australian economy is undoubtedly slowing, which was evident given the number of earnings downgrades and soft results witnessed in the most recent earnings season. And while bottom-up stock pickers try to identify those growth companies poised to rerate based on a catalyst, paying close attention to what is happening... Show More
While it is easy for investors to conclude that Australia’s run of economic growth is coming to an end with a housing slowdown, a closer balanced analysis of the economy would indicate otherwise. We believe that Australia again will transition growth to other segments in 2019 and reach its 28th... Show More
There is no doubt the Australian economy was weaker in late 2018 than it was during the first half of the year. It seems to have kicked off 2019 on a similarly weak note. Recent economic news has been unambiguously poor and it follows the dismal GDP results released last... Show More