This is Fear and Greed – The Week Ahead, where Sean Aylmer and Stephen Koukoulas discuss the major events, reports and releases that provide insight into the economy this week (with a look back at the events of last week too).
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Jennifer Duke: Welcome to Fear & Greed – The Week Ahead. I’m Jennifer Duke
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Jennifer Duke: and I’m joined by economist Stephen Koukoulas. You’ll find him
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Jennifer Duke: at thekouk. com, that’s T- H- E- K- O- U- K .
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Jennifer Duke: com, and on X, using the handle @ TheKouk.
Stephen, good morning.
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Stephen Koukoulas: Very good morning to you, Jen.
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Jennifer Duke: First of all, let’s go through last week. What were
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Jennifer Duke: some of the key takeaways? We had a lot going
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Jennifer Duke: on with the RBA to start with.
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Stephen Koukoulas: We did. We had the RBA Minutes coming out earlier
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Stephen Koukoulas: in the week, and that was a description and an
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Stephen Koukoulas: explanation, I suppose, about why they kept rates steady for
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Stephen Koukoulas: a third straight month, as it turned out, in early-
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Stephen Koukoulas: September board meeting. So, look, if anything, there’s still bias
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Stephen Koukoulas: to hike interest rates and it’s important, but they realize
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Stephen Koukoulas: that there’s a lot of rate hiking in the pipeline,
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Stephen Koukoulas: which is still to impact on economic activity. They are
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Stephen Koukoulas: pleased to see the inflation rate coming down from above
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Stephen Koukoulas: 8% at the end of 2022, now it’s below 5%
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Stephen Koukoulas: on the most recent reading. They’re detecting a bit of
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Stephen Koukoulas: a softening in the labor market. Labor- market conditions are
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Stephen Koukoulas: still very strong, but there’s a turning point. The unemployment
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Stephen Koukoulas: rate has been creeping up. So you put all those
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Stephen Koukoulas: things into the RBA mix, in the melting pot, and
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Stephen Koukoulas: it was on hold, but with a slightly hawkish bias.
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Stephen Koukoulas: So that was one of the big domestic issues.
The
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Stephen Koukoulas: other big thing globally was the bond market selloff. Last
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Stephen Koukoulas: week, even though the US Federal Reserve was on hold
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Stephen Koukoulas: in terms of its interest- rate settings, the Bank of
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Stephen Koukoulas: England was on hold, the bond markets just exploded, in
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Stephen Koukoulas: a bad way that is too, because we had yields
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Stephen Koukoulas: in, say, the U. S. 10- Year Treasury, as sort
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Stephen Koukoulas: of the global benchmark, hitting 4. 5%. We’re getting close
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Stephen Koukoulas: to a 20- year high on bond yields. And look,
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Stephen Koukoulas: the reasons aren’t clear. Given that central banks are on
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Stephen Koukoulas: hold, including the Fed, a lot of clever people are trying to work
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Stephen Koukoulas: out what’s happening. Could be linked to commodity prices, and
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Stephen Koukoulas: we all know what’s happening to oil and petrol prices
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Stephen Koukoulas: here, but other commodities have lifted as well. Could be
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Stephen Koukoulas: linked to the pretty parlous position of the US budget.
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Stephen Koukoulas: They’re running massive budget deficits there. So yeah, it was
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Stephen Koukoulas: an interesting move on the bond market because, of course,
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Stephen Koukoulas: that has implications for, well, just about every other market
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Stephen Koukoulas: around the world.
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Jennifer Duke: It’s definitely one we’ll keep watching, I think, for The
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Jennifer Duke: Week Ahead. What else are we expecting? I know we’ve
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Jennifer Duke: got some monthly CPI figures coming out.
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Stephen Koukoulas: Big week ahead. Yes, as you said, the monthly CPI
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Stephen Koukoulas: is the one that everybody, including the RBA and the new governor, Michelle
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Stephen Koukoulas: Bullock, are watching very closely because that’s the big game
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Stephen Koukoulas: in town, how quickly is inflation falling. Market expectations, because
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Stephen Koukoulas: this is for the month of August, we had, perhaps,
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Stephen Koukoulas: just a little bit of that petrol price hike impacting
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Stephen Koukoulas: the headline figure. Now, obviously, that’ll be trimmed out of
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Stephen Koukoulas: the underlying measure, so we should be seeing a bit
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Stephen Koukoulas: more of a tick lower in terms of the underlying
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Stephen Koukoulas: inflation rate. But headline inflation hovering just under 5%, perhaps,
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Stephen Koukoulas: if that happens, and I guess you’ll get confirmation in
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Stephen Koukoulas: the three- month moving averages, trying to get rid of
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Stephen Koukoulas: some of that volatility in the month- on- month series
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Stephen Koukoulas: showing inflation’s still continuing to decelerate back towards the target.
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Stephen Koukoulas: If that’s the case, then we feed through, gosh, we’re
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Stephen Koukoulas: looking a couple of weeks ahead to the October board
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Stephen Koukoulas: meeting and another on- hold decision, which is pretty much
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Stephen Koukoulas: being priced into the markets right now.
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Jennifer Duke: What else should we be expecting over the rest of
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Jennifer Duke: the week?
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Stephen Koukoulas: A couple of big numbers. The other one is retail
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Stephen Koukoulas: trade, and we know that that’s been very weak since
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Stephen Koukoulas: the latter part of last year, that we’ve basically had
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Stephen Koukoulas: seven months of retail trade just bouncing around, unchanged, a
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Stephen Koukoulas: couple months up, a couple months down. And that’s with
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Stephen Koukoulas: very strong population growth. And of course, even though inflation’s
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Stephen Koukoulas: falling, prices are still going up. So in nominal terms,
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Stephen Koukoulas: we’ve got this weakness in consumer spending. Consumers responding quite
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Stephen Koukoulas: accurately, in my view, to cost- of- living pressures, to
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Stephen Koukoulas: the interest- rate hiking cycle that’s obviously being delivered. Consumer
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Stephen Koukoulas: sentiment we saw last week, even though it inched up
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Stephen Koukoulas: a little bit, is still at a very low level.
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Stephen Koukoulas: So consumers are feeling pretty glum. And we know that
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Stephen Koukoulas: when consumers are glum, they tend to close their wallets
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Stephen Koukoulas: or not use their credit cards because they’re concerned about
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Stephen Koukoulas: their personal finances and, perhaps, this pressure on their finances.
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Stephen Koukoulas: So another soft number for retail trade expected later this
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Stephen Koukoulas: week.
The other thing which is sort of interesting is
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Stephen Koukoulas: job vacancies. We mentioned before that the labor market’s pretty
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Stephen Koukoulas: tight. Demand for labor’s still solid, but I think we’re
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Stephen Koukoulas: seeing a turning point in the labor market. So all
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Stephen Koukoulas: eyes on job vacancies to see whether there’s any further
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Stephen Koukoulas: turn lower in the number of job vacancies that are
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Stephen Koukoulas: out there.
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Jennifer Duke: And one big trend that we’re starting to see is
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Jennifer Duke: a lot of industrial action in Australia and overseas. Is
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Jennifer Duke: that to do with those job vacancies, do you think?
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Stephen Koukoulas: Oh, look, it is interesting. We’ve got the car and
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Stephen Koukoulas: the Hollywood strikes in the US, which is sort of
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Stephen Koukoulas: very unusual for the US, which has a history of
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Stephen Koukoulas: very low industrial disputation. And Australia’s been a little bit
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Stephen Koukoulas: of an uptick, too, over recent times. And yes, I
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Stephen Koukoulas: think you’re right. I think it is cost- of- living
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Stephen Koukoulas: pressures. And the workforce, if we can use that term,
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Stephen Koukoulas: are feeling these pressures. They’re seeing incredible profits in this
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Stephen Koukoulas: perception or, indeed, the reality that the corporate sector has
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Stephen Koukoulas: done very well over the last few years, profits are
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Stephen Koukoulas: strong, as we see, and that the wage share in
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Stephen Koukoulas: the economy is still very, very low compared to the
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Stephen Koukoulas: profit share, which has been booming.
And when you’ve got
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Stephen Koukoulas: an unemployment rate here and in the US, it’s below
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Stephen Koukoulas: 4%, the labor movement is in a position to sort
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Stephen Koukoulas: of flex a bit of their industrial muscle. So, yes,
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Stephen Koukoulas: I think it is linked to cost- of- living pressures
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Stephen Koukoulas: and what is still a relatively tight labor market, but
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Stephen Koukoulas: it clearly is a disruptive influence on the economy. But
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Stephen Koukoulas: the workers are using this advantage that they’ve got, I
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Stephen Koukoulas: suppose, and demand for labor being very strong to maybe
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Stephen Koukoulas: squeeze out a bit of a pay rise or two.
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Jennifer Duke: Definitely. I think it’s going to be a very big
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Jennifer Duke: few days ahead.
Stephen, have a great week.
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Stephen Koukoulas: Thank you, Jen. You, too.
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Jennifer Duke: And that was economist Stephen Koukoulas, better known as The Kouk. You
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Jennifer Duke: can find him at thekouk. com and follow him on
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Jennifer Duke: X, using the handle @ TheKouk. I’m Jennifer Duke, economics correspondent
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Jennifer Duke: at Capital Brief and filling in for Sean Aylmer. And
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Jennifer Duke: this is Fear & Greed – The Week Ahead.