Issue: Friday 24 July 2020 Gone are the days when economic policy was adjusted once each year by the government in the budget and fine-tuned once each month at meetings of the Reserve Bank board. The COVID-19 means we haven't had a budget in more than a year. What the Reserve Bank has been forced to do to interest rates, mean its monthly board meetings have little to no impact for the foreseeable future (Governor Philip Lowe reaffirmed this [...]
Issue: Friday 10 July 2020 In recent weeks the stock market and its many participants have once again hung on to recent gains in the face of complete uncertainty. The S&P/ASX200 is only around 10% below its level at the start of 2020, but economic indicators paint a less positive picture. Adding to the short-term volatility is the rise of a new phenomenon amongst the "corona- generation". 'Small trader calls' (where people pay for the right to buy the [...]
Issue: Friday 26 June 2020 Over the last couple of weeks, the stock market has once again defied pundits and pushed through fears of the ongoing recession, job losses, business closures and a second virus wave. How can this be? The rally has certainly gone on far longer than we expected but our view remains the same - The current rally's longevity is one built on optimism. It has been largely driven by the injections of liquidity and stimulus [...]
Issue: Friday 12 June 2020 Drought, bushfires and coronavirus ... the Treasurer has admitted Australia is now in a recession after the fall in the March quarter GDP. The June quarter is certain to be worse. And such are the times we live in, despite mass unrest on the streets of dozens of US cities where 40 million people are unemployed and ongoing tensions with China, markets surged over the last couple of weeks (albeit, like we saw in [...]
Issue: Friday 29 May 2020 This week the Prime Minister told Australia he wants to "fire the starters' gun on the economy" in a speech outlining his vision for recovery. While boasting of the fact Australia is "weathering the storm better than many and better than most", he lamented the fact "millions of Australians" are now relying on a recovery. A recovery that is for now, fuelled by government support. The worst does seem to be over. Road traffic [...]
We hope this note finds you and your family safe and well despite these being the strangest of times. As a community, we are all doing our best to adapt to the difficulties that face us at present. It is confronting. It is challenging. It is unsettling to say the least. But we are learning to appreciate the simple things, discovering new skills and for many working out what is truly important. Here at FinSec, we have settled into [...]
24th March - SA Leaders Q&A session with Andrew Creaser "People are worried about their investments, and emotions are running high but what we do have is control over how we respond. The best financial advice in the wake of COVID-19? Don’t panic. How do you make informed decisions? What are the opportunities?"
By now you have all probably seen the news on the spike in reported cases outside of China. The coronavirus disease is apparently communicable even by those who are not showing signs of having it, which is making it harder to control. The number of new infections in Wuhan/Hubei and the rest of China are falling sharply (latest new infection rate was 630 in Hubei and 20 in the rest of China). However, markets are reacting to the jump [...]
As we seem to say every year... Where has the last 12 months gone?! It is December once again and we are only a few short weeks away from celebrating a new year. As is customary of the season, we have prepared our FinSec reflections; a look at some of the stories that have shaped our year in 2019. The year of the banks 2019 started with the banks in the headlines and looks set to end the same [...]
When the math adds up, the numbers never lie. They're infallible, concrete, impossible to argue with -- however you want to spin it… It turns out that even innocent statistics can be twisted to support any nefarious thing you want to prove. The charts below show the exact same data, however the Y axis has been manipulated to downplay or emphasise weakness in the AUD since last year. Is it more dangerous to drive in NSW or the Northern [...]
