Tag Archives: ASX

Enough sell-off for now?

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SPX futures are looking pretty oversold here, and you could say there’s a bit of negative divergence on the hourly:

TD Ameritrade

The US markets are actually among the least oversold around the world. Japan, Australia, China and lots of Europe are down a lot more, which tells me there’s room for a corrective bounce here.

Here’s Australia’s main stock index, for example:

Bloomberg

Of course, I think all stock indexes are going to make deep new secular lows in the not-so-distant future, and the land down under will finally be welcomed to the depression as its real estate bubble pops and commodities decline again.

The bubble down under

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4

5-year view of the ASX 200:

Source: Bloomberg

Australia has a huge property bubble that has yet to burst. The average home there, at AU$502,492, is priced at eight times average household income, compared to about three times income at the height of the US bubble (though higher in places like California and Florida). This is a country with a population density of just 7.3 per square mile, compared to 83 for the US!

Aussies are still in the denial stage, which says a lot about the nature of group-think, since they can look at the rest of the world and see the exact same dynamic at play, though a couple of years ahead.

China appears to be in about the same place, with prices even more out of whack with incomes and rents, twice as overvalued as the most overvalued California houses in some cases. Australia and China also have plenty of froth in their equity markets, though those resemble the US and the rest of the world.

What would happen to Australia if housing prices, stock prices and commodity prices all collapsed at once? Come to think of it, Canada is in a very similar position, and their housing bubble, while not as wild, has still yet to deflate.