Economy

The energy sector and the big miners helped the local market higher today, on the back of ongoing rebounds in markets all around the world. Last night the European markets were up between four and five per cent. It does look like policymakers are starting to get it, that they need to be getting some action going.   Read more

It has been a relentless run of negative days on our market. It's good to see the market up over 3 per cent today with the banks and miners leading the charge.
  Read more

The market is still reacting to the eurozone crisis. IMF annual meeting over the actual weekend, and comments by both Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, that if the eurozone didn't act, there was going to be a cascade of defaults, and Larry Summers, who was Obama's chief financial adviser, comments that this is the gravest he has seen for 20 years.  Read more

One of the more provocative experts on global markets is Dr Marc Faber, a former managing director of Drexel Burnham Lambert, but for two decades now he's been an investment adviser, fund manager and broker dealer, and he's also the editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.
  Read more

The Italian and more generally European markets moving ahead last night provided a relief us with the retailing sectors helping to lift the local share market today.

  Read more

It never ends; debt concerns flared up again as Europe's third biggest economy, Italy, became the latest credit ratings target. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the Mediterranean nation, one notch from AA to A triggering the predictable sell-off on most markets and it was shades of 2008 amid signs of growing mistrust of Europe's banks.
  Read more

The markets open down, on the back of Italian credit downgrade but didn't stay down and now we've had a little bit of a rally. We knew that the Italian debt situation is not great.   Read more

The local market was hit again by a lack of confidence as hopes of solving the European debt crisis faded. The fear of a Greek default took hold again over the weekend and the there was no escaping it on the local market.   Read more

Today was a bit like groundhog day.

The market opened with a strong start and then about 11 o'clock it all started to turn back down, a bit like yesterday. But also like yesterday, there was a strong correlation between the movements in the Australian share market and the Australian dollar, which finished down about a cent today.   Read more

Now, we've got two French bank downgrades thanks to Greek exposure, but because we've got the leaders Sarkozy and Merkel cooing that Greece is still going to be part of the Euro, the market seemed to think that was alright.  Read more