Category Archives: risk

Monetary policy is broken

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Geoff O'Reilly

There’s been a lot in the media recently about ballooning housing prices and debt – and not just in Australia. The IMF has recently warned that Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and others, face the possibility of major economic … Continue reading →

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US GDP downer pushed the market up!

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Geoff O'Reilly

About an hour after my last post, the US Department of Commerce released it’s final revision of data for US GDP for the first quarter of 2014 … a staggering -2.9%. Bloggers, twitterers and columnists went into overdrive: “This is the … Continue reading →

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Approaching a market top?

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Geoff O'Reilly

A weird complacency seems to have settled over Wall Street. Stock prices are at a record. The S&P 500 broad index, currently at 1950, is remorselessly approaching 2000. It’s been climbing with hardly a pause for breath for more than five years. That’s … Continue reading →

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Could this be the market’s trigger?

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Geoff O'Reilly

Stock markets around the world have been defying gravity for months and months now. Rising ever higher in the face of logic, real economic performance and common sense. It’s now a precarious gamble: hang on and hope that a greater … Continue reading →

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Is the stock market rigged?

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Geoff O'Reilly

Michael Lewis thinks so. On 30th March he went on CBS’ 60 Minutes in the US to promote his latest book “Flash Boys” an expose of the the dark world of High Frequency Trading (HFT). There he asserted “the US … Continue reading →

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Science is even more certain about climate change

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Geoff O'Reilly

A couple of weeks ago the IPCC released its fifth major report AR5. 32 volumes is a bit much to wade through for most, but the Summary for Policymakers is a very digestible 28 pages (pdf) expressed in such plain … Continue reading →

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House prices … Going up or down?

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Geoff O'Reilly

House prices remain very topical right around Australia. Here in my country town, extra activity is certainly generating greater stability in prices, and even in some sub-areas prices have risen just a bit. This is regional Australia. How different to the … Continue reading →

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Good debt, bad debt and unreal debt

Posted on January 14, 2014 by Geoff O'Reilly

Governments, corporations and people borrow to pay for something they need now, but don’t have enough cash/savings to pay for now. If that something is a hard economic asset (say, a power station, or a house), part of the future … Continue reading →

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Fracking … benefits and risks

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

Dramatic improvements in technique for extracting oil and gas from deep sandstone and shale rock seams is credited by some with a major recent reversal of fortune for the oil and gas industry in the US. The more ambitious claims … Continue reading →

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