One key is whether the faux resolution of the Greek crisis will lead to rising sovereign bond yields. This might seem counterintuitive. If Greece is less risky and volatile, shouldn’t bond yields fall? Maybe not. If investors think the sovereign debt crisis is over, they may shift out of supposedly risk-averse assets like bonds and into equities. This would argue – in the very short term – for higher highs on the indices.
April 13th, 2010 | Dan Denning | 0 comments | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "Australian Bureau of Statistics"
Reserve Bank Agrees There is a Housing Shortage in Australia
RBA assistant governor Philip Lowe said in a speech in Sydney yesterday that constraints on home building are restricting the supply of homes in Australia. The shortage is one factor keeping prices up. Nothing was said about the lending boom.
March 11th, 2010 | Dan Denning | 43 comments | Continued
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
Credit Default Swap: Buying Insurance Against Default in Your Bonds
While Australians march down the path of a national house price obsession/mania, the world’s bond traders are firing warning shots. Bloomberg reports that, “Credit default swap (CDS) protection buying against sovereign debt default has spiked to five times the level of similar protection bought for corporate bonds, as the potential for a wave of sovereign debt defaults intensifies.”
January 28th, 2010 | Dan Denning | 6 comments | Continued
Are Aussie House Prices in a Bubble?
First off, house prices are still rising in Australia, but for the second month in a row sales are falling. Here in Melbourne, the average house price is now $510,000 according to the RP Data Index. Melbourne prices are up 15% since January. Granted, that’s not quite as good as the stock market this year. The All Ords is up nearly 30% year to date. But it’s not bad for houses is it?
December 1st, 2009 | Dan Denning | 103 comments | Continued
Dollar Rally the Sort of Thing that Will Lead to Correction in Gold Price
House prices were up 6.2% in the third quarter over the same time last year, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. House prices in the capital cities are surging. Stocks are surging. Gold and oil are surging.
November 17th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 5 comments | Continued
Biggest Factor Affecting Consumer Price Inflation is Growth in Bank Credit
Much will be revealed this week in the Aussie market, although a lot will probably remain obscure too. Producer price data for the September quarter comes out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Inflation anyone? Maybe not in wages. But certainly in raw materials (energy).
October 26th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 1 comment | Continued
Total Meltdown of the Aussie Housing Market
Next Wednesday will see the release of the national accounts for June. Those figures will probably show the economy being less bad than previously expected. That might lead to the end of the “emergency setting” of the RBA cash rate at 3%, which will precipitate the decline and fall…
August 28th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 93 comments | Continued
Reserve Bank of Australia Will Meet to Determine the Price of Money
This denial of reality should be interesting to watch. When a credit bubble deflates and an economy breaks its addiction to reckless debt, the sensible thing to do (since you’re repairing your balance sheet) is dial things back a bit. Save. Cut back on the gadgets. Eat more staples. Wear a sack cloth.
But if you still believe that you can get something for nothing-well then yes-you’d continue to borrow and spend like a madman.
July 6th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 9 comments | Continued
Australia Might Avoid the Technical Definition of Recession
You’ll recall that the Aussie economy did contract by half of one percentage point in the fourth quarter. That was pretty mild compared to the 6.2% contraction in the U.S. But if the trade-supported Q1 GDP figures can eke out a gain (“positive growth”), well then Australia will join the odd couple of Poland and South Korea…
June 3rd, 2009 | Dan Denning | 2 comments | Continued
Gold Sales Cost Europe’s Central Banks Billions
And gold? Well you know all about that. Yesterday’s Financial Times had three stories in a row on gold. The first was, “Beijing Bets on Bullion” and showed that even though China’s gold reserves have doubled since 2003, the country still only has 1.6% of its total foreign reserves in gold. The world average is 10.5%.
May 8th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 4 comments | Continued
House Prices Down and Aussie Market Enters Second Wave of Rebound Rally
If you were drawing up a plan for your dream economic recovery, this is how you would draw it up. The weakness emerging in the Australian housing sector (the fastest decline in prices in six years) would be made up for by resurgent Chinese demand for Aussie resources, led by the first growth in China’s manufacturing sector in nine months.
May 5th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 6 comments | Continued
Were the Government’s Stress Tests a Bogus Exercise in Deception?
Here we go again. Australia’s Federal budget-revealing glorious new deficit, is coming is coming next week. But this week will be all about tomorrow’s Reserve Bank meeting and today’s house price data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
May 4th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 0 comments | Continued
Property Market at “Inflection Point”
Investors refrain from taking long-term positions because there are so many known unknowns and even more unknown unknowns (although we conceded it is hard to put a number on the number of unknown unknowns, given their unknown nature, if you know what we’re saying).
April 8th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 1 comment | Continued
Government Preparing Another Stimulus
So what gives, why is there a huge difference between the seasonally adjusted figures and the original data series? If you look just at the original data series you’ll see that retail turnover has declined 32.1% in original terms from $24.7 billion in December of 2008 to $16.6 billion in February of 2009.That would be headline news!
April 2nd, 2009 | Dan Denning | 6 comments | Continued


