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Wednesday, 27 October 2021
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Social media, app and trading platforms that drive retail participation also open doors for greater volatility. Ironically, easy money is contributing to market risks, with shorting hit by spiking to the upside.
With central banks injecting as much liquidity as the market needs, the fundamental price signal has been lost. But the evidence is this does not help sustainable and long-term economic growth.
We cannot throw our hands up in the air and say 'this time around, it's simply too hard'. Having no macro view is unhelpful, but many of the baseline scenarios are overly optimistic, says the former CEO of Westpac and now Chairman of Chi-X Australia.
Free spending by governments risks unsustainably higher debt levels, as deficits matter and must be paid for. Here are four steps investors should consider as previous techniques may not work.
Central bank independence was an appropriate solution when inflation was a threat. In today’s low-inflation, low-growth and high-debt world, even central banks doubt their level of influence.
The fundamentals point toward bankruptcies of major sovereigns like the US and Japan in the next decade. The after effects could be catastrophic on all major asset classes. It’s time to discuss the makeup and costs of insurance.
Central banks have created surplus capital looking for a home, and Tesla is a classic example of an unprofitable tech company that has benefited. It survives on a dream rather than the ability to make cars.
Aggressive and sustained policy actions by central banks in the wake of the GFC are threatening the stability of global economies and pushing investors towards higher-risk investment options.
In previous cycles, bond yields provided a strong indication of the general health of the economy, but huge coordinated actions by central banks are changing that paradigm. Watch how you read the signals.
The European Central Bank was reluctant to embrace a QE strategy following the GFC. But in late 2014 it was introduced to fight deflationary forces and boost growth in the euro-zone. The question is: will it work?
Despite the Federal Reserve's tapering of its QE policy, liquidity in developed economies will remain abundant with the major central banks adding another USD1 trillion in 2014. But watch for global inflation.
A presentation or panel discussion is time well-spent if you can extract one new idea, and in Boston, a few were surprisingly original, including that it is better to think of the economy as a biological organism.
We tend to forget that house prices often fall. Direct lending controls are more effective than rate rises because macroprudential limits affect the volume of money for housing leaving business rates untouched.
The survey drew a fantastic 2,000 responses with over 1,000 comments and polar opposite views on what is good policy. Do most people believe the home should be in the age pension asset test, and what do they say?
Any policy decision needs to recognise who is affected by a change. It pays to check the data on who pays taxes, who owns assets and who earns the income to ensure an equitable and efficient outcome.
With articles on the pensions assets test read about 40,000 times, 3,500 survey responses and thousands of comments, there was a lot of great reader participation. A few comments added extra insights.
It is hard to think of any area of widespread public concern where the same policies have been pursued for so long, in the face of such incontrovertible evidence that they have failed to achieve their objectives.
There are reasons to believe inflation will stay under control, and although we may see a slowing in the global economy, two companies should benefit from the themes of 'Stable Compounders' and 'Structural Winners'.