Weekly Market Update – 25th September 2026
Global share markets mostly rose over the last week helped by strong US economic data, a return of AI optimism and renewed hopes for a diplomatic solution to the Strait of Hormuz blockage. For the week US shares rose 1.2%, Eurozone shares rose 0.8% and Japanese shares rose 2.1% but Chinese shares fell 1.5%. The Australian share market remained under pressure falling around another 0.8% not helped by ongoing expectations for RBA rate hikes on top of worries about the impact of rising oil prices, rising [...]
Weekly Market Update – 18th September 2026
Global sharemarkets had a soft start to the week on concerns of higher oil prices, rising bond yields and a repricing to a more aggressive US Federal Reserve. Most of these factors are still intact. But sharemarkets managed to rally into the end of the week on a dip in oil prices, which also helped to bring down bond yields. Comments from Nvidia CEO that chip sales could be double next year helped semiconductor stocks. The start of Fed rate hikes pushed the US dollar up [...]
The Bond Market has Revised its Quote
Bond investors are sometimes described as the duller inhabitants of financial markets. They lend money, collect interest and spend an unusual amount of time discussing inflation expectations in fractions of a percentage point. Until, that is, they change the price of money for almost everybody. Government bond yields have risen sharply across developed markets. The Australian 10-year government bond yield has reached its highest level since 2011, while the US 30-year Treasury yield has climbed to its highest in around two decades. There is no single [...]
Weekly Market Update – 11th September 2026
Global share markets fell again over the last week as both oil prices and bond yields pushed higher with more upwards pressure on central bank interest rate expectations. The Australian share market was particuarly hard hit with around a 3% fall not helped by talk of back to back hikes by the RBA on top of worries about the impact of rising oil prices, rising bond yields which act as a drag on share market valuations and falling property prices. Energy shares rose but this was offset [...]
Why Rising Japanese Interest Rates Matter to Australian Investors
Japan is learning what money costs again. And because Japanese savings have helped finance global markets for decades, what happens in Japan may affect the cost of money well beyond its borders — including Australia. For nearly three decades, Japanese interest rates sat close to zero — and, at times, below it. That made Japan an extraordinary source of cheap global capital. Japanese banks, insurers, pension funds and households had enormous pools of savings, but relatively few opportunities to earn meaningful returns at home. So much [...]
A FinSec View – Japanese savers, family deposits and a factory that shouldn’t be that big
The View - 18th August 2026 Somewhere in Australia, a first home buyer collects the keys to a new home. The bank records the mortgage. The government records the first home buyer concession. The sales data records the purchase price. What none of them necessarily records is the transfer from Mum and Dad. The family loan. The guarantee. Or the extra years spent at home while a deposit is saved. That came to mind after a curious statistic appeared in the Victorian data recently: first [...]
If we’re richer, why aren’t we happier?
Here’s an uncomfortable chart. Source:World Happiness Report, ABS, AMP Australians are substantially richer than we were a generation ago. We live longer, travel further, own more, communicate instantly and have access to things previous generations couldn’t have imagined. We aren’t any happier. Economist Shane Oliver recently went looking at the economics of happiness and found something economists have wrestled with for decades: once countries reach a certain level of prosperity, more income appears to buy surprisingly little additional happiness. The reasons are fascinating. We get used [...]
You think you have been hacked or scammed. What now? The first job is not to work out how it happened. It is to stop it spreading.
The victims are rarely who you expect. Some are highly experienced professionals. Some are younger and extremely comfortable with technology. The common denominator is usually not a lack of intelligence or digital skills. It is that modern scams are becoming remarkably convincing. A scam creates urgency twice. First, when the criminal pressures you to act. Then again when you realise something may be wrong. That second burst of urgency needs an order. Stop the money. Secure access. Report what happened. There will be time to work out [...]