All Posts Tagged With: "Australian Bureau of Statistics"

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.

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?

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?

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).

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.

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%.

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.

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!