Economics

Ahead of Tuesday’s federal budget, the Australian economy eased in April, with business conditions and confidence back around long-term readings, but retail still remains very weak.

Private equity group Anchorage Capital Partners has stunned investors, including ARN, with its shocking decision to drop out of the bid for Southern Cross Austereo. This move will likely kill the $250 million offer.

A solid finish to the stock markets on Friday, but today will see a more circumspect ASX re-open.

China's consumer prices rose for a third straight month in April, while producer prices extended their declines, as cost pressures remained mixed across a stuttering economy.

For all the noise and punditry about Tuesday night’s 2024-25 federal budget, investors will be looking later in the week to see what happened with US consumer inflation in April.

A test this week marks the last days of the US March quarterly reporting season. Only a handful of S&P 500 companies might be reporting, but a couple are going to be pretty influential, especially in the consumer sectors, with mighty Walmart and Home Depot, America’s biggest DIY group, both reporting on Thursday.

Gold prices rose on Friday for their strongest week in six, as bets of an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve again moved into the center stage.

The weakness in US oil drilling continued last week with another fall in operating oil rig numbers.

The 2024-25 budget will be the billing focus for Australian markets for part of this week, at least, though wages data on Wednesday and the April jobs report could very well take over as the focal points.

Australians just don’t seem to like gold as an investment—or rather, they don’t seem to like investing in the metal like investors in India, China, the US, and many other countries do.

As we approach the end of the week, what’s the score from central bank meetings this week?

China’s economy showed a few more signs of life in April, with imports jumping more than forecast and exports back in the black for the first time in three months.

Tesla's sales problems in China are not going away, and it continues to lose ground against its big Chinese rival, BYD, which is now outselling Elon Musk’s company in the core product: pure battery-powered vehicles.

Despite some slightly hysterical claims about the big banks being 'casualties', their half-year results confirm they are a long way from being wounded by the sluggish economy, high inflation, and tightening margins.

The Reserve Bank has left the cash rate unchanged at 4.35% at its latest meeting but revealed increasing worries about the health of the wider economy beyond still too-high inflation.

Euroz Hartleys senior analyst Michael Scantlebury says “sensationalist” headlines about the end of mining are grossly exaggerated.

US copper futures shook off a couple of weak days on Friday to climb nearly 2%, settling at $US4.5680 a pound ahead of the important elections in Panama on Sunday (yesterday).

Now, American investors have hopped back on the rate-loom bandwagon, but they could be on it for the wrong reasons after the April jobs data on Friday and a couple of other data releases during the week that suggest the economy might be in the process of cooling a bit more quickly than understood.

Just as Apple’s first-quarter performance had won back skeptical investors, Warren Buffett's surprise $US 20 billion sale of Apple shares will send shockwaves through share markets starting today.

Another negative week for the US oil and gas industry, with oil rig numbers now tumbling below their level at the close of 2023.

A quiet-ish week lies ahead for some markets, with a couple of central banks meeting: the Bank of England, which meets later in the week, and the Reserve Bank here today and tomorrow.

Berkshire Hathaway’s March quarter earnings were overshadowed at the weekend by news of a big sale of Apple shares and a possible significant investment in Canada.

A storm in an Easter egg or those fears of a melting box of Valentines was overdone?

The International Copper Study Group (ICSG), headquartered in Lisbon, Portugal, has updated its projections on the global balance of refined copper production and consumption, shedding light on critical trends and challenges shaping the industry's landscape.