With interest rates rising, is now the time to shift your focus to cash flow? It is understandable as the cost of holding an investment property increases the more interest rates rise. For the best part of a decade, this has not been much of a concern for the average investor, with interest rates at…
At the board meeting on 4th October the RBA took the cash rate target 25 basis points higher, a lower increase than in the preceding four months. At 2.6%, the cash rate target is now at the highest level since July 2013 and surpasses the decade average prior to the onset of COVID-19 (which was…
Global stock markets are tanking on fears of recessions in the US, the UK and Europe, and the OECD is actually forecasting recessions in Europe. So is recession now inevitable in Australia? Not at all. The good news is there are several reasons to think Australia might be able to escape a global slide into…
Australia’s annual inflation rate eased to 6.8 per cent in August, after peaking at seven per cent in July. The ABS released its first monthly inflation indicator, which was a media release with some limited information for July and August ahead of the full first release for the indicator alongside the Q3 CPI on 26…
I keep careful track of consumer confidence because it’s a good indicator of what’s ahead for our economy and property markets. And currently, consumer confidence is up by 1.8pts to 87.8 – the highest in nearly four months since late May this year. This increase has mainly been driven by improving sentiment in regard to…
We are living in ‘interesting’ times, aren’t we? With inflation being the highest it’s been for years, interest rates rose again this month and people are wondering how high they will go, plenty of stocks are down, and the war in Ukraine continues, supply chains are broken, the pandemic is lingering, China is in lockdown,…
Are we near the peak of the interest rate cycle? We know that the Reserve Bank Board decided to increase the cash rate by 50bps to 2.35% at its September meeting. But the RBA recently signalled that the ‘normalisation’ phase of their rate rises is over. Bill Evans, Chief Economist of Westpac recently made the…
Remember in early 2020, when media headlines were awash with ‘doom and gloom’ predictions about Australian property prices? A number of predictions, forecasts and financial modelling papers were released, and the information contained within them was not good news. No matter which way you sliced it, property prices were set to crash – some predictions…
Tuesday’s national accounts show Australia ending 2021-22 on a strong note. The gross domestic product grew by a historically robust 0.9% in the three months to June, and by an unusually-high 3.6% over the year. Australia’s economy is now more than 5% bigger than it was before COVID. This is a better performance than most…
The RBA took the cash rate another 50 basis points higher at the September board meeting, citing ongoing inflationary pressures amidst a tightening labour market. The cash rate setting, at 2.35%, is now at the highest level since January 2015, but still slightly below the pre-COVID decade average of 2.56%. Housing markets have reacted negatively…
