The SIRA Group Australian leading index, which is designed to give advance warning of impending shifts in the Australian business cycle, has been falling for nearly a year now. And over the last couple of months, our coinciding index has also begun to slide. The leading index is the red line in the chart below. Note that it has been shifted to the left by 7 months, which is approximately how long it “leads” the overall economy.
SIRA Groups David Bannister discussing the Era of Boutique Advice on the ‘No More Practice’ website for their Reality Check blog. If you are looking for something that is as close as you can get to owning a license without actually having it, a boutique dealer group may be your answer…
In the 12 months to June 2014, the median house price in Melbourne rose by 19.6%, and in Sydney by 17%. These are very large numbers. If this were to continue over more than one year, it would be deeply concerning, for two reasons. First, these sorts of growth rates would mean that median house prices would double every 6 or 7 years, which would price everybody except for existing owners out of the market.
Almost all investments give you two different sources of return: capital gains and income. Shares are no different, except that the income is called dividends.
In the long run, though, the capital gains from shares don’t happen in a vacuum. They too depend on dividends/profits. In reality, ultimately all the return from shares depends directly or indirectly on dividends and how they grow.
Having said that, it is possible to have short-term capital gains without dividends changing.
SIRA Groups David Bannister discussing the need for Financial Planners and Accountants to be salespeople on the ‘No More Practice’ website for their Reality Check blog. David discusses how selling is an important part of running a successful business, but probably not the kind of selling your thinking of…
The SIRA Australian leading index, which is designed to “lead” the economic cycle, continues to weaken, calculated on a year-on-year percentage change basis. This provides an implicit forecast of what could happen to the real economy, represented here by the SIRA coinciding index (so called because it coincides with the cycle). We introduced our Australian leading and coinciding indices here.
In the chart below, the leading index (the red line) had been plotted with a 7 month lag, i.e., it has been shifted forward by seven months.
