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Speaker 1: Today on Fear and Greed. The local share market set

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Speaker 1: to open much higher after tumbling ten percent in four weeks,

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Speaker 1: as Wall Street recovers somewhat. Prime Minister Anthony Albanezi reaffirms

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Speaker 1: he would consider troops on the ground in Ukraine if asked,

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Speaker 1: and millions of welfare recipients set to get a bigger

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Speaker 1: paycheck from this week, plus a soft week for auction markets,

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Speaker 1: and hundreds of US companies remove references to diversity and inclusion.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Fear and Greed. Daily business news for people

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Speaker 1: who make their own decisions. It is Monday, the seventeenth

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Speaker 1: of March twenty twenty five. I'm Michael Thompson, and good

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Speaker 1: morning Sean Aylmer.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, and habby Saint Patrick's day. When you have

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Speaker 2: a name like Sean and family names like Brendan and

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Speaker 2: Mary Allen and Christopher and Patrick, you're celebrated Saint Patrick's

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Speaker 2: stay in my household growing.

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Speaker 1: Up, it is a very big occasion in the al

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Speaker 1: my household. It is now Sean the main story this morning.

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Speaker 1: Wall Street rallied hard over the weekend, which augu is

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Speaker 1: pretty well for the local share market, which is off

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Speaker 1: ten percent from its peak four weeks ago, but it

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Speaker 1: seems to investors somewhat cautious, bunch right, having it and

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Speaker 1: each way bet but also pushing gold towards three thousand

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Speaker 1: US dollars an ounce for the first time.

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Speaker 2: That's right. So there's been four weeks of selling locally

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Speaker 2: reflecting what's happened on Wall Street. But over the weekend,

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Speaker 2: the S and P five hundred, the top five hundred

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Speaker 2: stocks on Wall Street jumped more than two percent. That

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Speaker 2: index did. Futures markets here say the local boss will

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Speaker 2: open more than one percent higher. The sentiment kind of

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Speaker 2: is that the market has sold off too much. It's

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Speaker 2: gone down that ten percent, it's gone down too much.

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Speaker 2: We'll have to wait and see whether that's true. Clearly

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Speaker 2: there's not total confidence that there won't be any more downside.

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Speaker 2: We can see that in the price of gold. It's

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Speaker 2: just below three thousand US dollars an ounce. That's a

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Speaker 2: record high. Futures training is when you're buying gold for

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Speaker 2: delivery in three months time, for example, that's above three

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Speaker 2: thousand dollars. That makes it pretty clear that those people

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Speaker 2: think it is going to be on that benchmark rate.

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Speaker 2: And of course golds where investors go when they're worried

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Speaker 2: about uncertainty, but generally investors just seem a little bit

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Speaker 2: more upbeat at the moment now. Bitcoin jumped six percent

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Speaker 2: of the weekend from its four month low. It's training

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Speaker 2: around eighty five thousand US dollars a unit, not an

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Speaker 2: ounce as we said on the weekend, need to creep

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Speaker 2: that one. Other cryptos also rose, and some of the

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Speaker 2: big tech giants that are under pressure, notably Tesla until

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Speaker 2: lesser extent en Video also rose. So there was just

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Speaker 2: a sense of a little more confidence, shall we say,

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Speaker 2: over the weekend, and that should help our market today.

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Speaker 1: So slightly more optimistic. Are professional investors calling the bottom

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Speaker 1: of the market then, or is it too soon?

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Speaker 2: It's too soon. Momentum training we're buying and selling follows

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Speaker 2: sort of the trend. The momentum the vibe, Michael, the vibe, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's such a technical term, isn't it such

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Speaker 1: an easily defined quantity?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So, I mean it's very powerful momentum training, and

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Speaker 2: that does suggest the market could go lower. So the

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Speaker 2: vibe is that the market could go lower, just like

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Speaker 2: it helped it push it a lot higher last year.

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Speaker 2: So a lot of time we were talking about the

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Speaker 2: Australian big banks and the big tech stocks in the US,

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Speaker 2: and that was a lot of momentum training people were

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Speaker 2: just sort of piling in on that. That momentum is

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Speaker 2: sort of the other way at the moment, notwithstanding what's

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Speaker 2: happened over the past forty eight hours or so, and

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Speaker 2: that's hard to beat. The sort of tariffs is also

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Speaker 2: hanging heavily over the market. This week there were a

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Speaker 2: bunch of central banks from the US FED, which is

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Speaker 2: the most important bank of Japan, Swiss National Bank delivering

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Speaker 2: their verdict on interest rates. Now we've sort of we

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Speaker 2: haven't forgotten about interest rate discussions, but because so much

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Speaker 2: has been going on around tariff's and around markets, we

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Speaker 2: haven't focused on interest rates and that will come back

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Speaker 2: to the forour this week. We've got employment figures here

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Speaker 2: in Australia which are really important and that will also

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Speaker 2: help us focus a little bit more. Next week we're

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Speaker 2: going to have the federal budget, so plenty going on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there certainly is, and if you want some expert

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Speaker 1: analysis of those central bank meetings and what to expect

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Speaker 1: as well. Straight after the show, we have fear and

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Speaker 1: greed the weak Ahead, featuring our resident economist Stephen could Cooulus,

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Speaker 1: who just keeps an eye more than an eye. He

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Speaker 1: just swims around in this that's right other time, so yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is worth a lesson now. Prime Minister Anthony Abernezi

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Speaker 1: Sean has reaffirmed that Australia would quote consider an Australian

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Speaker 1: troop contribution to a coalition of the willing peacekeeping presence

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Speaker 1: in Ukraine if our request were to come through, which

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Speaker 1: is the significant part it needs to be requested.

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Speaker 2: That's right. The Prime Minister pledged to stand up to

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Speaker 2: a bully president in Russia's Vladimir Putin. He said any

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Speaker 2: contribution to a peacekeeping force would be small.

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Speaker 1: Now.

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Speaker 2: On Saturday Misstra Alberzi attended a coalition of the Willing

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Speaker 2: call that included European leaders, a promise Key Starmer actually

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Speaker 2: organized it. New Zealand, Canadian leaders. They were all there.

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Speaker 2: They seem to get to the US, wasn't there. The

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Speaker 2: whole idea was sort of to get together and almost

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Speaker 2: coalesce around how to respond to what's going on around Ukraine,

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Speaker 2: particularly from Trump and what Vladimir Putin does and peacekeeping

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Speaker 2: truths that seems to be the flavor of discussions.

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Speaker 1: It's quite a remarkable state of affairs, isn't it That

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Speaker 1: we've got a coalition of the willing that is deliberately

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Speaker 1: set up excluding the United States, which in every past

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Speaker 1: instance these things are typically led by the US. And

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Speaker 1: this just seems such an unusual set of circumstances that

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Speaker 1: now we have an entirely separate coalition.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, it just demonstrates

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Speaker 2: how much the world has changed.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Now, quick chat about property, Sean. After a

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Speaker 1: couple of pretty good weeks in terms of auction clearance rates,

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Speaker 1: things have slowed down just a touch, with another below

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Speaker 1: seventy percent preliminary clearance rate across the nation's capital cities.

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Speaker 2: Yes, so the pc R otherwise known as the preliminary

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Speaker 2: clearance rate.

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Speaker 1: Michael, you just say that so smoothly. Now, I remember

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Speaker 1: the good old days when you when I could just

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Speaker 1: see the anxiety building in you the closer you got

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Speaker 1: to having to say it, And now you're just like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I've got this cool. It's a CU numbers.

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Speaker 2: So that clearance rate came in at just over sixty

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Speaker 2: nine percent for the weekend that's about three percentage points.

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Speaker 2: It was about seventy two percent two three weeks ago

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Speaker 2: or three weeks aga it was seventy two percent, down

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Speaker 2: to sixty nine percent. Sydney Melbourne both above seventy percent.

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Speaker 2: In fact, Sydney was actually up a little bit, but

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Speaker 2: that just we were quite upbeat in the past couple

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Speaker 2: of weeks about the housing market and it dontally. It

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Speaker 2: just seems that things are a touch soft at the moment,

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Speaker 2: and particularly given we've had an interest rate cut that

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Speaker 2: certainly helped for a couple of weeks, but the oomph

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Speaker 2: seems to have come out of the market from that

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Speaker 2: rate cut.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and on property, we've already talked about the week ahead,

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Speaker 1: which comes up after the show. After that there is

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Speaker 1: an interview with Core Logics Tim Lawless, who.

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Speaker 2: Just knows this stuff so well he does. He just

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Speaker 2: speaks so clearly on it. I always find myself slightly

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Speaker 2: intimidated when I'm talking to Tim because he knows so

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Speaker 2: much about it, and I kind of think I know

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Speaker 2: about it, and then Tim starts talking.

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Speaker 1: I just think and you realize you know nothing.

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Speaker 2: I know nothing, You know nothing? Do you know nothing?

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Speaker 1: Oh? Well played, great? Game of Throne reference. The thing is,

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Speaker 1: this chat is such a broad look at the last

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Speaker 1: five years and how much the world of property has

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Speaker 1: changed in the last five years from kind of house

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Speaker 1: prices being up more than forty percent, and where units

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Speaker 1: sit and where the regional markets sit, and crucially what's

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Speaker 1: going to come in the next five years, which is

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Speaker 1: really the interesting part because no one knows, but if

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Speaker 1: anyone does, I reckon Tim's got the best idea, so

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Speaker 1: plenty to come after the show, but we've still got

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Speaker 1: more to cover. Jean will be back in a moment

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Speaker 1: with the rest of the day's business news, Shawn. The

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Speaker 1: federal government has thrown support behind beef producers as the

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Speaker 1: United States threatens to expand tariffs to agricultural products, saying

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Speaker 1: the big losers from a tariff on local beef would

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Speaker 1: be US buyers, a big max.

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Speaker 2: There you go. Trade Minister Don Farrell spoke to US

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Speaker 2: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik on Friday morning and then said

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Speaker 2: he'll stand with beef, wine, and other agricultural exporters to

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Speaker 2: protect their interests. Now, the background to this, US President

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Speaker 2: Donald Trump pledged to protect American agriculture and last week

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Speaker 2: threatened two hundred percent tariff's on European wine and champagne

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Speaker 2: in response to a tariff on American whiskey. In Australia.

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Speaker 2: I mean, we already have the twenty five percent tariffs

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Speaker 2: on aluminum and steel, but the big ones for US.

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Speaker 2: Meat is our biggest export to the US, gold and

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Speaker 2: pharmaceutical products. So the fact that the US is threatening

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Speaker 2: agricultural tariffs on Europe, that's to cause concern in Canberra yesterday,

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Speaker 2: mister Farrells and the US tariff and Australian beef would

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Speaker 2: be significant, adding that most of it, most of our

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Speaker 2: beef goes into McDonald's hamburgers, so if you put a

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Speaker 2: tariff on beef, you'll push up the price of the

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Speaker 2: big Mac.

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Speaker 1: Now the Grant's Commission Sean has released the latest proposed

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Speaker 1: GST carver. This is a process. God, it's a tough one,

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Speaker 1: isn't it because it always triggers outcries of being unfairly

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Speaker 1: treated by the States. Victoria is going to receive more

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Speaker 1: GST revenue than is notionally raised in the state.

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Speaker 2: So last financial year the current financial year, it received

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Speaker 2: about ninety six cents and the dollar of GST back

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Speaker 2: next financial year that goes to about a dollar six Now.

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Speaker 2: The reason there's a change is Victoria has a lower

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Speaker 2: capacity to raise mining revenue relative to the main mining states.

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Speaker 2: Too many ms there. The thing is Western Australia always

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Speaker 2: receives they've got huge mining royalties, so they're GST Carvet.

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Speaker 2: They always receive a lot less and they now have

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Speaker 2: a flaw. The point about this, I mean New South

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Speaker 2: Wales is about the same. Queensland looks to be the

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Speaker 2: biggest loser in this. It'll go from ninety five cents

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Speaker 2: to eighty five cents. The thing about all this is

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Speaker 2: it's political. And so where Queensland is the state that's

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Speaker 2: going to lose out most alven easy and the ALP

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Speaker 2: want to win votes in that state. They want to

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Speaker 2: win electorates in that state coming with a lower GST

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Speaker 2: and the state, the Queensland state government complaining about it

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Speaker 2: ain't a good look. Victoria is also important, but it

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Speaker 2: works the other way for the ALP. That looks better

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Speaker 2: for the government.

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Speaker 1: Do you reckon it works as a political issue in

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Speaker 1: an election campaign or is it? I mean, in this

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Speaker 1: form it's too complicated, I think, But as soon as

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Speaker 1: you start to say that the federal government is not

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Speaker 1: giving out kind of hospitals, the share that they do.

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Speaker 2: That kind of thing, that kind of vir So that's

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Speaker 2: we're in the vibe today. The queens say, yeah, so

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Speaker 2: Queens and government's already complaining. Victorian government isn't going to complain.

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Speaker 2: And so it's not about the actual numbers. It's about

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Speaker 2: the vibe, Michael, the vibe.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and what it actually means for everyday voters. Yes. Now,

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Speaker 1: the federal government while we're talking about this Sean. The

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Speaker 1: Federal government will provide support to A and Z bank

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Speaker 1: operations in the Pacific through a two billion dollar ten

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Speaker 1: year guarantee, the chief executive, Shane Elliott, said would support

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Speaker 1: a more resilient and sustainable business in the region.

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Speaker 2: The guarantee comes with various commitments from A and Z,

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Speaker 2: including investing an extra fifty million dollars in systems to

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Speaker 2: enhance its digital banking offering in the region. According to

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Speaker 2: the Finn Review. It was also maintained as part of

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Speaker 2: the deal, fee free transfers of money into the Pacific

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Speaker 2: to reduce remissions costs between Australia and the island nations.

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Speaker 2: AAN z will also continue to fund a financial literacy

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Speaker 2: education program. Australian banks generally have been pressured by the

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Speaker 2: government to hold or even increase banking services in the

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Speaker 2: Pacific as part of national security efforts to slow Chinese

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Speaker 2: banks from establishing a stronghold in the region. Westpac was

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Speaker 2: forced to stay open in PMNG in twenty twenty three,

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Speaker 2: while Commonwealth Bank said it will start banking in Neru

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Speaker 2: in second half of this year after the respective governments

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Speaker 2: signed a security treatment in December. Ainzed definitely the most

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Speaker 2: international Australian banks being Pacific for about one hundred and

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Speaker 2: forty years.

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Speaker 1: I mentioned this one on the top of the show.

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Speaker 1: Millions of Australians on welfare will have their payments boosted

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Speaker 1: by thousands of dollars each year under indexation changes due

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Speaker 1: to kick in this week.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, some more than five million people, including pensioners, renters,

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Speaker 2: job seekers will receive increases from March twenty, which is Thursday.

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Speaker 2: A single pensioner will receive an extra nine hundred and

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Speaker 2: thirteen dollars, couples almost six thousand dollars. People on job

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Speaker 2: seek will get an extra three three seven four. Single

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Speaker 2: parents mainly women, will also get more. Now, pensions are

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Speaker 2: indexed twice a year March in September. The jump in

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Speaker 2: pension very much on what the inflation rate has been,

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Speaker 2: so of course we've had a high inflation rate for

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Speaker 2: the past year or eighteen months, so these indexations are

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Speaker 2: really putting a lot more money into people's bank accounts.

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Speaker 1: Turning to international news, now, President Donald Trump has ordered

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Speaker 1: military attacks against sites in Yemen controlled by the Iranian

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Speaker 1: back to Houthi militia after months of disruption to shipping

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Speaker 1: lanes in the Red Sea. We have been talking about

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Speaker 1: these disruptions for a.

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Speaker 2: Long time now, and they're still going on. Trump over

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Speaker 2: the weekend said the strikes came in response to the

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Speaker 2: Huthy's maritime attacks on vessels sailing through the Suez Canal

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Speaker 2: and Southern Red Sea, ostensibly in solidarity with her mass

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Speaker 2: following the twenty twenty three outbreak of war with Israel

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Speaker 2: and Gaza. The strikes would describe as more far reaching

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Speaker 2: than those undertaken by the Biden administration. They're set to

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Speaker 2: last days, if not weeks, According to Bloomberg, Trump on

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Speaker 2: his social media platform social said, and I quote, we

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Speaker 2: will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.

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Speaker 1: Finally, sean hundreds of US companies have removed references to diversity,

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Speaker 1: equity and inclusion from their annual reports, in a sharp

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Speaker 1: pullback from the corporate values that have become a target

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Speaker 1: of President Donald Trump's administration.

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Speaker 2: Incredible how quickly these corporations have moved. More than two

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Speaker 2: hundred of America's largest corporates have cold dimensions of DEI

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Speaker 2: and related terms such as diversity. According to Factset data

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Speaker 2: and company filings analyzed by the Financial Times. Of the

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Speaker 2: top four hundred companies and the S and P five

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Speaker 2: hundred Index, ninety percent of those have filed an annual

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Speaker 2: report since Trump's election, they've cut at least some reference

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Speaker 2: to DEI, many ditching the term entirely. In addition, many

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Speaker 2: companies no longer include statistics breaking down their workforce by race,

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Speaker 2: or have dropped references to awards for DEI initiatives or

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Speaker 2: internal affinity groups such as Networks for Black Professionals, etc.

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Speaker 2: It is remarkable how quickly this is.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I was even reading that in Forbes

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Speaker 1: and on The Guardian about the Enola Gay, the aircraft

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Speaker 1: that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan that pictures

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Speaker 1: of that had been flagged for removal from the Pentagon. Yes,

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Speaker 1: which is just extraordinary, and it just shows clearly it's

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Speaker 1: just a bit of a catch all at the moment,

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Speaker 1: and maybe it will be kind of more refined later on,

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Speaker 1: but at the moment it does appear to be a

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Speaker 1: fairly widespread initiative to remove these things, Sean big show.

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Speaker 1: Up next is the weaker Head Fear and Greed. The

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Speaker 1: Weakerhead featuring our resident economist Stephen co Coolest following that

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Speaker 1: is the daily interview with Tim Lawless from core Logic,

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Speaker 1: all about the last five years in the property market,

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Speaker 1: everything that's changed since the COVID pandemic began. Plenty of

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Speaker 1: good listening coming up. Thank you very much, Sean.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Michael.

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Speaker 1: It is Monday, the seventeenth of March twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 1: Make sure you're following the podcast and please join us

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Speaker 1: online on LinkedIn, Instagram, ex TikTok and Facebook. I'm Michael Thompson.

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Speaker 1: That was Fear and Greed. Have a great day.