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Website improvements

Hi all, A quick note to offer guidance on the new website. As well as the layout changes that make it easier to access content for new readers, it comes with a dramatically improved sign-up and resubscription process, greatly enhanced speed, and a much better mobile experience (since 95% of traffic is now phone!). The

Latest posts

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Roy Morgan unemployment trends up

Via Roy Morgan. In April 2025, Australian ‘real’ unemployment increased 176,000 to 1,780,000 (up 1% to 11.2% of the workforce) with more people joining the workforce and overall employment dropping in April. The expansion in the workforce was the main driver of the increase in unemployment with 156,000 people joining the workforce lifting the number

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Iron ore joins the party

A bit of a wallflower, though, and not much joy for steel. The latest CISA output has faded to bang on year-ago levels. The growth upgrades have begun. Goldman. We had assumed that the US-China trade talks in Geneva would reduce tariff rates on Chinese products from >100% to 50-60%. The joint announcement released on

4

The chase begins

The Market Ear on the recession that never was. Best recession ever Once again, the recession never came. Economists and markets spent much of the past year bracing for a downturn—citing rate hikes, inverted yield curves, and slowing indicators—only to watch the economy remain stubbornly resilient. It’s a familiar pattern. As the old adage goes, “macroeconomists

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UK tightens immigration rules. So must Australia.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called for the nation to take back its borders, saying the UK is becoming an “island of strangers” and that immigrants should learn to speak English. He has announced sweeping immigration reforms with the aim of reducing net overseas migration back to pre-pandemic levels. NEW: UK Prime Minister

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Australian dollar trumped

DXY took a breather. AUD bounced. Lead boots to the moon. Gold prays it ain’t so. Metals go for growth. Miners still stuffed. EM yawn. Junk says nothing ever happened. No yield relief. Stocks only go up. Wall Street bears are in full retreat. Goldman. We expect this move to leave the US effective tariff

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Aussie immigration stuck on high plateau

Indian students and migration agents celebrated Labor’s federal election victory as a green light to immigration. The Indian community and migration agents know that the Albanese Labor government is a soft touch on immigration. Their view is well-founded, with record international student enrolments: Record graduate visas on issue: And record bridging visas on issue as

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Builder failures collapse on housing supply targets

The latest ASIC data shows that the construction sector leads the nation’s insolvencies, with 2,795 firms going under so far this financial year, representing a 24% increase on 2024. The following chart from Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro illustrates the rising construction sector insolvencies, which are tracking at around double the pre-pandemic norm: Last week,

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Macro Afternoon: 13 May 2025

    AUD/USD           EUR/USD           USD/JPY           GBP/USD           Gold           WTI           Brent           Australia 200           US S&P 500  

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The ABC will only get worse

By Stephen Saunders Labor has the ideal ABC for 2025-31—a powerful and complacent woke-left propaganda-ministry. The broadcaster’s overdue shunt of overrated Laura Tingle is typical.  For wicked immigration-influencers like “independent” Abul Rizvi, or Australian un-National University’s Liz Allen and Alan Gamlen, it’s second nature to play the Racist Card to shut down popular resistance to

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Now we can’t even make poo

We can’t make plastics for anything. Nor windows for anything. Nor towers for anything. Nor explosive inputs. Nor anything for anything. The one thing you would think we were good at is making shit. But no, the great Australian idiot can no longer even take a dump. AFR. High power prices could force the closure of

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Infrastructure Australia projects dystopian future

Let’s take a walk down memory lane. The date is 13 August 2019, six months before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Australia. Infrastructure Australia’s (IA) Australian Infrastructure Audit was released, warning that $40 billion a year of infrastructure investment is needed to catch up with Australia’s voracious population growth. Otherwise, productivity and living standards will

2

Fearful Aussie consumers need sugar mummy

Westpac with the note. Westpac Consumer Sentiment Index up 2.2% to 92.1 in May. • Index recovers about a third of April’s tariff-related fall. • Solid rebound in views on finances led by sharemarket rally, lower fuel prices. • Benign inflation shores up consumer expectations for interest rate cuts. Consumer sentiment has recovered just over

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Trump delivers “pandemic scale” shock to trade

Goldman with the note. On Friday 5/9, we hosted a virtual group meeting with the authors of the Logistics Managers Index, Dale and Zac Rogers, who are observing a situation where inventories have built up (as per their surveys of large logistics’ managers) ahead of tariffs and amid the ongoing 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs;

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ANU gaslights on rental crisis

Last month, Ben Phillips from ANU’s Centre for Social Research published a spurious analysis claiming that “lower migration wont ‘free up housing’”, because “as population increases dwelling numbers also increase”, and “with fewer migrants we’d also have fewer dwellings”. Phillips’ analysis was comprehensively demolished on the grounds that: Very few migrants work in construction. Therefore, migrants

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Love hated rallies

The Market Ear on the chaos of the child president. Break away SPX is crushing the short term resistance around 5700 (futures), trading well above the 200 day for the first time since March. 5900 is the first resistance to watch. A close above that area and people will be starting to mention ATHs… Source:

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Australia’s economy is an immigration-fed “basket case”

Alan Kohler published a stinging critique of the Australian economy, which he described as a “basket case”: Productivity is declining and housing is unaffordable. Economic growth depends entirely on government spending and immigration, and high immigration has not been matched with enough infrastructure and housing to support it; as a result, Australia is divided, defensive,

4

Australian dollar falls off a cliff

DXY is back as the child president spews his slop in a hard reverse. AUD has switched from safe haven to growth proxy, Lead boots to the moon! That is the ugliest double top on gold I can remember. Metals vote for growth over tariffs. Miners maybe. EM nears breakout. Grow my junk! Yield pause.