Data Diary

The latest new motor vehicle sales provide further confirmation that the Australian ex-mining economy is struggling: Still the RBA has gone to great lengths to express their concern about an Australian economy that is, in their view, operating close to its limits. From Glenn Stevens latest speech (here): As of today, measures of capacity utilisation [...]

The cascade of unruly data points must be beginning to worry those in charge with steering the Australian economy. Today’s releases – housing finance (here) and new motor vehicle sales (here) – both confirm that middle Australia is feeling the pinch. First to the good news – the absolute number of home loans was up [...]

Turning to Australian consumer spending, the data suggests that the recent fall in consumer confidence (here) is not an outlier event. So while new motor vehicle sales have recovered the magic million mark (from the ABS here): The trend is sales volumes has turned decidely southward: Perhaps more poignant for the state of the consumer [...]

If you subscribe to the view that Australia’s household leverage has peaked, then it is hard to believe that our discretionary spending will match the performance of recent years.  Okay, it’s the glass half full view of the world but really look at the annual growth of retail sales since 1982: The ‘low growth’ period [...]

It’s been a few moons since we last looked at New Motor Vehicle Sales (here). The August data was released yesterday by the ABS (here): Banality is my middle name – or is it their middle name – it is ABS after-all? (There’s a conspiracy theory in there somewhere – the Freemasons do Kabbalah with Australian [...]

New Motor Vehicle Sales for May released today by the ABS (here). Sales of new vehicles have proven resilient having now recovered to their long term growth rate.  Notably, the month of May was up 18% on the same month last year.  For the last 12 months we have now officially passed back through the [...]

Just getting to the April 2010 new motor vehicle sales released by the ABS this week (see here for original).  I’ll admit that I was a little taken aback when Alan Kohler purred about April’s next-to-record jump in car sales – led by 4×4′s sold to Western Australian miners apparently.  For a similar view see [...]

ABS released new motor vehicle sales for March 2010 (here).  Sales continue to rebound strongly from the very depressed levels of early 2009. But remain below trend on a trailing 12 month basis. While March is a seasonally strong month for new car sales, it does appear that sales are recovering towards their longer run [...]

Upbeat sales numbers for February suggest that the Australian consumer is feeling pretty good about themselves. It might be the continued climb in house prices or resilient employment numbers – whatever the driver, new car sales are suggesting the Australian economy remains on the front foot.

New motor vehicle sales for Jan 2010 confirm that car sales topped last year – absent more government handouts this sector will struggle through 2010.