News that I and many others were effectively in lockdown from Friday was depressing. It got even more depressing when the whole of Sydney and surrounds was put into a two-week lockdown on Saturday. And I am not in Victoria which has had it even worse over the last year, and I can only imagine how bad this must be for those looking forward to school holidays.
Average dwelling prices in Australia’s capital cities rose by 2.3% in May, their eighth monthly gain in a row, although having settled somewhat since the 2.8% recorded in March. Capital city prices are now 7.8% higher than previous records set in September 2017. Prices in Sydney alone, hardly at bargain basement levels before COVID-19 began, have increased by 14.3% in just four months, their fastest such increase in more than 30 years.
Global share markets mostly rallied over the last week. The big surprise perhaps was the US where shares rose 0.4% for the week to a new record high and bond yields fell despite another surge in inflation, because investors (rightly in my view) interpreted the make-up of higher than expected inflation for May as consistent with the Fed’s assessment that the spike in inflation would be transitory.
Australians lost over $851 million to scams in 2020, a record amount, as scammers took advantage of the pandemic to con unsuspecting people, according to the ACCC’s latest Targeting Scams report released today.
