Daily FNArena News

Weekly musings by your editor. Has the March rally for equities finally arrived?

The market’s focus will again be on economic data releases as well as a G20 preparation meeting and this weekend’s get-together of OPEC members.

The CEO of the world’s largest producer of yellow cake believes a “uranium supply crunch” is “just around the corner”.

Headline Australian jobs data for February was better than expected but a closer look at the numbers shows a decline in full-time jobs.

Standard Chartered sees the US dollar coming under short-term pressure from improving investor risk appetite but TD Securities doesn’t see the Aussie or Kiwi dollars benefitting from such a trend.

With the first thermal coal settlements in Japan indicting a benchmark price of US$70/t, brokers are starting to pick their Aussie coal favourites.

The latest survey into consumers expectations in Australia can be summarised best as: “more record lows”.

January data for housing finance in Australia showed a modest gain but economists don’t see the improvement as enough to prevent interest rates coming down again next month.

The March measure of the Westpac consumer confidence index was a surprising one.

Oil and gas exploration is a high risk, high reward business and both Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse see Karoon Gas as an attractive exposure at current levels.