That brings us to the merger and acquisition activity in Australia. You may have seen that gold producer Lihir received a $9.2 billion takeover offer from Newcrest over night. Lihir says the offer undervalues the company’s assets. But whether it does or doesn’t, does the bid remind you at all of the BHP and Rio Tinto shenanigans a few years ago?
April 1st, 2010 | Dan Denning | 2 comments | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "aussie stocks"
Statistical Models Can’t Predict the Future
But we do know that financial markets are getting more volatile in recent years, not less. Is it globalization? Is it the digitalization of trading data and continuous, algorithmic trading models? Does the pursuit of an informational advantage (or the belief that one is possible) drive people to trade more?
March 2nd, 2010 | Dan Denning | 6 comments | Continued
Economy of China to Decelerate?
But there are plenty of sceptics on the China story already. Our old friend Marc Faber told Bloomberg that, “It does not make sense for China to build more empty buildings and add to capacities in industries…
February 24th, 2010 | Dan Denning | 7 comments | Continued
Aussie Stocks Situation Presents Good Buying Opportunity For the Fearless Trader
Sometime around last Thursday afternoon the mood in the market went from concerned to “totally freaked out”. It is a trifecta of concerns that have investors on the edge. Chinese growth is slowing. The American employment picture is not good. And Europe is in the middle of a dangerous debt crisis.
February 8th, 2010 | Dan Denning | 17 comments | Continued
Aussie Stocks on Tenterhooks and RBA to Decide on Interest Rates Increase
Meanwhile, conflicting data is coming out of the housing market. Imagine that. Data from the Australian Finance Group shows that borrowing fell to a five-year low in December. AFG reported a 19% fall in mortgage activity. It was the lowest figure in any one month since 2005. And according to AFG’s data, first home buyers as a percentage of new mortgages fell by half from the same time last year.
February 1st, 2010 | Dan Denning | 47 comments | Continued
Price of Gold Communicates U.S. Monetary and Fiscal Policy is Lousy
It’s also possible that the Fed thinks a weak dollar will reduce America’s trade deficit, boost its export competitiveness, and lead to higher employment. We think this is a pipe dream. And we’re not talking about a lead pipe. We’re talking William Blake-style opium.
November 5th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 3 comments | Continued
Inflation is Evident If You Just Follow the Money
One quick note about this: there is obviously plenty of inflation in the prices you pay every day. But most consumer price indices are rigged to understate inflation, as our colleague David Evans pointed out yesterday in Canberra at the Gold Standard Institute conference in Canberra. Trimmed medians…hedonic adjustments…
November 2nd, 2009 | Dan Denning | 5 comments | Continued
The Only Thing Really Going Down Right Now is the U.S. Dollar
Okay. Who put the financial world in a time machine and took us all back to 2007? Seriously. Oil traded above $80 overnight. Gold is hovering near $1,060. Stocks are up. Bonds are up. The Aussie dollar is up. Will anything ever go down again?
October 21st, 2009 | Dan Denning | 2 comments | Continued
Aren’t You the Least Bit Suspicious that Goldman is Talking Up the Banks?
Goldman Sachs has raised its rating on large banks to “attractive.” In related news, Neal Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program has said that the Feds may have, er, not quite told the truth about the health of the banks receiving TARP funds. He didn’t use the word, lie though. How are these two items related? We’ll explain below.
October 6th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 4 comments | Continued
Building a National Economy Around the Housing Industry
Let’s also assume that the government cannot borrow its way to larger stimulus payments. With lower spending forecast for government, businesses, and households, you begin to wonder if Australia’s economy has a home grown engine, or if it will rely on something else, or someone else beyond the borders.
July 30th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 9 comments | Continued
When Fears of Inflation Are More Pronounced
But let us not be accused of being pessimists. Take a look at the chart below. It’s from a 2002 book called Triumph of the Optimists by Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Stanton of Princeton University. It shows that over the last one hundred years-and importantly, prior to the blow-off phase of the credit bubble in 2000-dividends accounted for half of your total return in U.S. and U.K. common stocks.
July 7th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 1 comment | Continued
House Prices Always Go Structurally Higher in Australia
What about housing? ANZ Bank published a report on the subject yesterday. Among other things, it declared that, “We expect dwelling prices to edge higher for much of the remainder of 2009 with upside risk presenting from intensification of strong fundamentals, a shift in price expectations and restoration of confidence.”
July 2nd, 2009 | Dan Denning | 75 comments | Continued
How U.S. Mortgage Rates Affect Aussie Stocks
Today’s Daily Reckoning has a simple task: to figure out what all this business in America means for Australia. Okay, it’s simple in theory, but maybe not so simple in fact. Let’s have a crack anyway. The last few days we spent a great deal of time trying to discover the goal of the Fed’s $1 trillion foray into Treasury bonds and the U.S. mortgage-backed securities market. Why?…
March 20th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 10 comments | Continued
RBA Cuts Interest Rate to 5.25%
In case you missed it, the RBA cut the cash rate by three quarters of a percentage point. It’s now at 5.25%. But did you notice a hint of indecision in the comments the Bank published with the decision?…
November 5th, 2008 | Dan Denning | 0 comments | Continued
