Australian Banks: A Shorting Opportunity

Feb 3, 2017 | Australia

The housing-driven downturn we have discussed through last year continues to develop, albeit at a slower pace than we originally expected. The situation is deteriorating, though, with building permits – the best leading indicator for housing – now falling...

Aussie Housing Finance Rolling Over

Apr 6, 2016 | Australia

We are already seeing cracks in the housing market in Australia.  At Variant Perception we track news articles of things in oversupply, as this flags interesting investment themes.  Normally, we’ve seen commodities in oversupply, but interestingly, Australian...

Keep Your Eyes On Aussie Housing Leading Indicators

Jul 22, 2015 | Australia

(from our Tactical from July 14th) We continue to focus on Australian housing leading indicators to help with timing on our structurally bearish Australia outlook, set out in our March thematic Aussie Housing and Banking Boomerang.  Lower rates in Australia are...

Tactical Buy on NZD

Jun 12, 2015 | Australia, Other

(from our Tactical from 2nd of June) We only have one tactical signal this week, a buy on NZD.  The VP Divergence Signal looks at correlations to detect when an asset is trading out of sync with other related global macro assets.  This provides a good short-term proxy...

Morbidly Obese Australian Banks

Nov 18, 2013 | Asia, Australia, Banks

Australian banks have grown in size hugely in recent years.  Astonishingly, Commonwealth Bank of Australia is the tenth largest bank in the world, despite Australia having a far smaller population than China, the US and the UK – the other countries who have...