Pete is a Chartered Accountant, Chartered Secretary and has a Financial Planning Diploma. Using a long term approach to building businesses, investing in equities, & owning a portfolio he achieved financial independence at the age of 33. Visit his blog
New home sales fell by -7.2 per cent in March, and have effectively been cut in half since the first quarter of 2022. With cancellation rates now above 30 per cent, many builders are reporting “negative sales” over recent months according to the Housing Industry Association: Source: HIA In New South Wales, new home sales…
There were another 524 construction insolvencies in the March 2023 quarter, an increase of 93 per cent from a year earlier. 235 of the failures were in New South Wales, 149 in Victoria, and 89 in Queensland. The residential construction sector is known to have a high multiplier, and failures will ripple out through subcontractors…
Nothing too much wrong with the labour force figures for March, with the economy adding another +53,000 jobs, taking employment to a record high of 13.88 million. The unemployment rate held steady at 3.52 per cent. Of course, immigration is now picking up apace, and the labour force won’t stay so tight for too much…
The RBA Governor unveiled a tidy speech in Sydney, explaining why interest rates are on pause (and why rates will likely peak at a lower level in Australia than in some other countries). Domestic demand has already been hammered by the rate hikes delivered to date. Meanwhile, good prices are set to fall in Australia as…
There was yet another thumping (by-)election result yesterday – this time a historic win in Aston – and once again swinging hard to Labor, which will be causing some serious angst in Liberal circles, and possibly even in time a leadership spill. Zooming out and looking at the bigger picture, the Labor Party has now…
The ABS released its monthly inflation gauge, and it showed inflation dropping sharply from 7.4 per cent to 6.8 per cent in February. This was way under market estimates and confirms inflation as well down from 8.4 per cent last year. After an implied -0.4 per cent last month, the monthly inflation figure was only…
Inflation is set to fade. Inflation expectations are falling, with implied forecasts dropping to around 2-year lows in the US. Australia’s 3-year bond yield is trading at 2.79 per cent yesterday morning, which is of course a long way below the current cash rate target of 3.60 per cent. I reckon it will be important…
Sydney unit prices are now rising, and I believe will continue to do so for a number of reasons. Firstly, interest rates are at or close to their peak now, with Australia’s 3-year bond yield trading down towards 2.7 per cent, from around 3.7 per cent only a few weeks ago. This largely reflects the…
Following on from ANZ reporting a sharp slowdown in spending in March comes some more reassuring figures from Judo bank. All sectors of the Australian economy are now in contraction, suggesting that the interest rates hikes are more than just doing their job. And input price pressures are easing sharply, confirming that the peak inflation…
We got the expected bounce in employment in February, with total employed persons rising by +64,600 as Aussies returned from their long summer breaks. These solid increases came after two consecutive monthly declines, however. The 3-month average gain in employment was thus very modest at only +12k. With population growth rates running at record highs,…
