Weekly Market Recap
Australia
15/06/2020
Week in review
- Consumer confidence rises to 93.7
- Business confidence up to -20
- U.S. Fed indicates rates on hold until 2022
Week ahead
- Australia retail sales
- Australia labour market report
- China industrial production
Thought of the week
The re-opening of the Australian economy is helping to lift both consumer and business confidence. The strong Aussie dollar has provided an additional boost to the business outlook. The rising confidence levels will act as a tailwind for a range of sectors geared towards a more open economy. Even with last week’s market selloff, fuelled by fears of a second-wave of infections in the U.S., the process of restarting the Australian economy is likely to continue. However, the longer term view is not as rosy. The employment intentions component of the business survey is lagging other metrics, suggesting a longer term loss in output as the labour market takes longer to heal. Furthermore, as things return to preCOVID levels, it is worth noting that pre-COVID was still not very good.
Confidence being restored
Z-score
Source: NAB, Westpac, FactSet, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, all returns in local currency unless otherwise stated.
Equity price levels and returns: Levels are prices and returns represent total returns for stated period.
Bond yields and returns: Yields are yield to maturity for government bonds and yield to worst for corporate bonds. All returns represent total returns. AusBond Comp is the AusBond Composite 0+ Yr, AusBond IG is the AusBond Credit 0+ Yr both provided by Bloomberg.
Currencies: All cross rates are against the Australian dollar. An appreciation of the foreign currency against the Australian dollar would be positive and a depreciation of the foreign currency against the Australian dollar would be negative.
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