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
A true story: a couple of decades ago a friend of a friend had a ‘few too many’ and crashed his car onto the middle of a roundabout at 2am. He panicked and left the car where it was, with a not-so-cunning plan to collect it the next day after he’d sobered up. What he…
Home Lending surges CoreLogic reported that housing prices rose in October, and the latest lending figures suggest there’s more to come. Investor lending rose another 5 per cent in September, but remains modest overall. But homebuyers are driving the rebound, with owner-occupier lending rising to historical highs, excluding refinancing. First homebuyer numbers understandably fell in…
Unlike in previous global downturns this time around policy responses have been both swift and enormous, including in Australia. Australia has seen a significant expansion of the central bank’s balance sheet, a rapid move lower for interest and mortgage rates, a raft of stimulus measures which have driven a substantial Budget deficit, and early access…
Commonwealth Bank released an update on COVID-19 temporary loan deferrals. On the home loan side of things, deferred facilities fell by 21,000 (or $8 billion) in September. About 93,000 loans remained in deferral, of which 52,000 are due to expire in October, although clearly many of these will be extended out further. Overall, 6 per…
In a recent blog post I listed the 23 winning investment habits of Warren Buffett and George Soros as identified in his excellent book by Mark Tier. Although in many respects equities and real estate present very different challenges. In today’s blog I’ll take a brief look at what parallels property investors might be able…
Confidence bounces, but … Consumer confidence rose +1.2 percent last week to 93.5, according to ANZ-Roy Morgan, a 13-week high. However, confidence levels remain well below the monthly average since 1990 of 112.6, and even still a reading of 93.5 is equivalent to what Australia experienced through the financial crisis. Source: ANZ-Roy Morgan On March…
International arrivals were close to zero in June, reported the ABS. The drop in visitors to Australia has been unprecedented, at close to 100 per cent. This does raise an interesting question as to why total rental vacancies have been falling since April on SQM’s most timely available figures. Partly this might be because border…
We’re all watching the unemployment numbers carefully aren’t we? Well…employment and hours worked rose in July. Employment was up by an estimated +114,700 or +1.3 per cent to 12.46 million. However, employment remains -414,000 or -3.2 per cent lower than a year earlier. The rebound in July was mainly driven in July by New South…
Aussie employment bounced from 12.1 million to 12.3 million in June as many parts of the economy began to reopen, driven by the re-hiring of part-time workers. Still, there’s a long way to go just to get back to nearly 13 million employed, which is where we were tracking in the first quarter of the year. The…
How bad will our recession be? Maybe not as bad as many are suggesting. Freelance economist and journalist raised and articulated some very interesting points in a Twitter thread recently, especially with regards to luxury goods and items expenditure. Firstly, he noted, Treasurer Frydenberg has unleashed an enormous and unprecedented fiscal stimulus, to complement the…
