The Cheesecake Factory is a US chain restaurant with a 21-page menu. Diners can choose between more than 250 options. The restaurant prides itself on making each dish from scratch. As you can imagine that takes a large kitchen staff.
Each day there are between 60 and 100 people who work in the kitchen with each chef responsible for overseeing the ...
For decades, the world economy became increasingly integrated across product, labor, and capital markets—in a word, globalization. One of the many consequences of globalization was higher cross-market correlations. For example, the correlation between U.S. and German equities rose from 0.35 in the period 1970-1997 to 0.81 in the period 1998-2026.
In ...
Housing is crucial to economic wellbeing, yet it is still often ignored or treated incompletely in the analysis of income inequality. In our new research, we argue that this omission creates a distorted picture of the levels and trends of inequality in Australia.
Owner-occupied housing delivers two major economic benefits: imputed rent (the rental ...
Today’s lithium rally has the look and feel of the tech stock rally in the early-2010s.
In those years, Amazon, Google and Netflix had proven business models and were household names. Their stocks were rising but no-one fully trusted it given the experience of the dotcom crash 10 years earlier.
Lithium today is rallying as major investment banks ...
In response to the re-emergence of inflation (core / trimmed mean) which has dogged Australian policy makers since COVID, this month the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) raised interest rates for the third time this year to 4.35%.
The increase in the official cash rate contrasts with almost every other developed country in the world (excluding Japan). ...
Around the world, democracy as a system of government is backsliding. After more than 50 years of liberal democracy in ascendancy, democratic progress plateaued around the turn of the century and is now going backwards.
In 2025, there were only 31 liberal democracies out of 179 countries assessed. And the United States – once the poster child for ...
As anticipation grows for the upcoming federal budget, financial commentators will fixate on two words: debt and deficit. These will be the measures by which the government’s fiscal performance will be judged. But there is a growing disconnect between debt and spending, with the culprit being ‘off-budget’ accounting.
Where typical government ...
The following is an abridged version of Ashley Owen’s monthly snapshot. You can read the full version here.
Here’s my quick wrap-up on global markets for serious long-term Aussie investors – including shares markets, interest rates, inflation, bonds, currencies, commodities, and more, including portfolio implications.
Key points:
Share markets around ...
By 1976 Prime Minister Harold Wilson was exhausted, drinking excessively and demoralised. Wilson’s state didn’t substantially differ from his electorate. The UK was a mess.
In the two years of his most recent run as Prime Minister, Wilson had been kicking the can down the road. With a razor thin majority of three seats in the House of Commons he ...
We have only a short time left to the end of the financial year to get our SMSF or other super funds in order and ensure we are making the most of the strategies available to us. Here is a checklist of the most important issues that you should address with your advisers before the year-end.
Get this wrong and your SMSF could lose tax exemptions, ...
For those of you who don’t know me, I retired 2 months ago from being a full-time academic researching retirement planning for nearly 20 years. Now I am focusing on implementing my findings: for myself, for individuals and for organisations.
As I promised when I retired, I am providing a month by month account of my findings from the other side. As ...
Markets seem bulletproof. World equities have pushed to all-time highs in the face of unresolved tensions in the Middle East and associated dangers for the world economy. ‘Buy-the-dip’ is alive and well. And ‘staying the course’ in the face of evident threats has once again proven sound advice.
What if markets failed to deliver over an extended period ...
The Cheesecake Factory is a US chain restaurant with a 21-page menu. Diners can choose between more than 250 options. The restaurant prides itself on making each dish from scratch. As you can imagine that takes a large kitchen staff.
Each day there are between 60 and 100 people who work in the kitchen with each chef responsible for overseeing the ...
For decades, the world economy became increasingly integrated across product, labor, and capital markets—in a word, globalization. One of the many consequences of globalization was higher cross-market correlations. For example, the correlation between U.S. and German equities rose from 0.35 in the period 1970-1997 to 0.81 in the period 1998-2026.
In ...
Housing is crucial to economic wellbeing, yet it is still often ignored or treated incompletely in the analysis of income inequality. In our new research, we argue that this omission creates a distorted picture of the levels and trends of inequality in Australia.
Owner-occupied housing delivers two major economic benefits: imputed rent (the rental ...
Today’s lithium rally has the look and feel of the tech stock rally in the early-2010s.
In those years, Amazon, Google and Netflix had proven business models and were household names. Their stocks were rising but no-one fully trusted it given the experience of the dotcom crash 10 years earlier.
Lithium today is rallying as major investment banks ...
In response to the re-emergence of inflation (core / trimmed mean) which has dogged Australian policy makers since COVID, this month the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) raised interest rates for the third time this year to 4.35%.
The increase in the official cash rate contrasts with almost every other developed country in the world (excluding Japan). ...
Around the world, democracy as a system of government is backsliding. After more than 50 years of liberal democracy in ascendancy, democratic progress plateaued around the turn of the century and is now going backwards.
In 2025, there were only 31 liberal democracies out of 179 countries assessed. And the United States – once the poster child for ...
As anticipation grows for the upcoming federal budget, financial commentators will fixate on two words: debt and deficit. These will be the measures by which the government’s fiscal performance will be judged. But there is a growing disconnect between debt and spending, with the culprit being ‘off-budget’ accounting.
Where typical government ...
The following is an abridged version of Ashley Owen’s monthly snapshot. You can read the full version here.
Here’s my quick wrap-up on global markets for serious long-term Aussie investors – including shares markets, interest rates, inflation, bonds, currencies, commodities, and more, including portfolio implications.
Key points:
Share markets around ...
By 1976 Prime Minister Harold Wilson was exhausted, drinking excessively and demoralised. Wilson’s state didn’t substantially differ from his electorate. The UK was a mess.
In the two years of his most recent run as Prime Minister, Wilson had been kicking the can down the road. With a razor thin majority of three seats in the House of Commons he ...
We have only a short time left to the end of the financial year to get our SMSF or other super funds in order and ensure we are making the most of the strategies available to us. Here is a checklist of the most important issues that you should address with your advisers before the year-end.
Get this wrong and your SMSF could lose tax exemptions, ...
For those of you who don’t know me, I retired 2 months ago from being a full-time academic researching retirement planning for nearly 20 years. Now I am focusing on implementing my findings: for myself, for individuals and for organisations.
As I promised when I retired, I am providing a month by month account of my findings from the other side. As ...
Markets seem bulletproof. World equities have pushed to all-time highs in the face of unresolved tensions in the Middle East and associated dangers for the world economy. ‘Buy-the-dip’ is alive and well. And ‘staying the course’ in the face of evident threats has once again proven sound advice.
What if markets failed to deliver over an extended period ...
