We’re fortunate to live in an age where information is at our fingertips. A proliferation in apps that make low-cost investing easy, combined with anaemic interest rates on bank savings and reduced spending during COVID-induced lockdowns, has delivered an unprecedented opportunity for many Australians to wade into the investment world. But as we’ve seen in the past couple of months, […]

German exports rebounded at a stronger-than-expected pace in February, data from Destatis showed on Monday. Exports grew 6.4 percent on a monthly basis, reversing a 3.0 percent fall in January. Shipments were forecast to climb 1.5 percent. Likewise, imports advanced 4.5 percent in February, in contrast to the 4.0 percent fall a month ago. Economists had expected a monthly growth […]

I think I’ve figured out why journalists – myself included – are always so perennially disappointed by federal budgets. Forced to surrender our phones and internet access for six hours in a budget ‘lockup’, there is, of course, an attendant ‘well, this better be good’ feeling. There is also an innate defensiveness born of the HSC-like pressure-cooker environment in which […]

A day ahead of the release of the closely watched monthly jobs report, the Labor Department released a report on Thursday showing a modest increase in first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits in the week ended March 26th. The report showed initial jobless claims edged up to 202,000, an increase of 14,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 188,000. […]

The euro area unemployment rate dropped to a record low in February ahead of the war in Ukraine, official data revealed on Thursday. The jobless rate fell to 6.8 percent in February from 6.9 percent in January, Eurostat reported. The rate was forecast to drop to 6.7 percent from January’s initial estimated rate of 6.8 percent. Data showed that the […]