The 2025 UBS Global Wealth Report was released this week, which once again showed that the median Australian is among the wealthiest in the world. UBS ranked Australians second in the world for median wealth, with the typical Australian worth US$268,424. Australia also had 1,904 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS. Not surprisingly, Australia is
Australian inflation is rapidly becoming a one-trick pony as energy price hikes devour everything in their path. Various government energy rebates are still having a big effect as they roll off.. After increasing by 16.3% in March, electricity increased by 8.1% in the June quarter. However, because of the second wave of the Commonwealth Energy
I have warned repeatedly that Australia’s labour market has been living in a ‘fool’s paradise’. The nation’s unemployment rate remains historically low at 4.3% and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) expects unemployment to remain at this low level. However, Australia’s labour market is not nearly as rosy as the official unemployment suggests. First, Roy
Risk markets were unable to move much overnight as the latest US initial jobless claims came in slightly higher than expected (until revised by Sharpie by the Fanta Fuhrer) while a lot of Fedspeak around the slowing US economy led Wall Street to closed mixed at best. Oil prices pushed lower while the USD was
DXY was soft. AUD up. CNY is stalled. Gold is signalling Waller cuts! Metals not so much. Big bear tries again. EM hugs the bubble. Junk is lagging badly. Yields did the opposite to gold. The bubble inflates. It looks like a new and dovish Fed chair is front-running. Bloomberg. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller is emerging
Exorbitant land costs are the primary driver of Australia’s high home prices. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), residential land values, which underpin the housing market, increased by 8.8% between 2023 and 2024, reaching $7.7 trillion. Residential land values increased from 1.1 to 2.9 times Australia’s GDP over 35 years, ending in 2023-24.
It was all about tariffs again today in the minds of risk markets but Asian shares have all broadly advanced except the ASX200 which put in a scratch session. More rate cut speculation builds as the US Federal Reserve has to weigh up increasing inflation against further jobs losses as the USD continues to
The latest data from the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) showed that house prices nationally have fallen by 16.4% over 44 months, with all major centres experiencing heavy declines. As illustrated below by Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro, home prices in real terms have crashed back to 2019 levels. Cotality released its house
Victoria disease is the malady of a permanent Labor government leading to an ever-rising population, along with state dependency and falling living standards. It is a national pandemic, but patient zero is Victoria, and she is now dying from a combination of crush loading, energy failure, excess debt, and inflated expectations. One area where Victoria
One of Australia’s most significant educational policy failures was the gradual closure of secondary technical schools between the 1970s and 1990s, driven by the mistaken belief that young people should attend university. The mistakes were then compounded when governments redirected funding for vocational education and training (VET) to universities, alongside redirecting what little VET funding