by Kris Sayce on July 7, 2009
We know that on the surface it may not seem like a big deal, but it should give you reason to pause for some thought about the global banking system.
Last week we wrote about Commonwealth Bank’s online Netbank service being offline intermittently for two days.
But perhaps more than anything this electronic stuff-up should get you thinking about where your money is.
We all know that when you deposit $100 cash into your bank account it doesn’t sit in the vault waiting for you to collect it. You pay the cash over the counter, the teller frantically clicks a few buttons and there you have it, your balance increases by $100.
The $100 cash goes into the cashier’s drawer.
After your account has been credited with the $100, and the $100 note is in the cashier’s drawer, another customer enters the bank and is given the $100 note that you just handed over.
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by Kris Sayce on March 19, 2009
They’ve only gone and done it. It’s been threatened for some time now, but eventually US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has confirmed the Fed will pursue a policy of “printing” money.
So, why should we care? Surely that will be positive news for Australia.
It could be the beginning of a global inflationary disaster. And it’ll be on a scale never seen before.
But I’ll have to cover that off tomorrow, because today I want to follow up on our notes from Tuesday about the impending housing bubble in Australia. But if you are after a dose of the Fed today I’m sure Dan Denning, upstairs at the Daily Reckoning will have plenty to say on the subject.
After dishing out millions and billions of dollars in new home-lending thanks to the government’s First Home Buyers Grant, Commonwealth Bank of Australia boss Ralph Norris now thinks “there could be some concerns if it became a permanent fixture in the home loan system.”
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by Gabriel Andre on March 17, 2009
The banks are bouncing back! We plot NAB (black bars) and CBA (blue bars) on a daily chart. Of course over the long-term those two stocks are highly correlated, but on short-term basis there are discrepancies that may make them more or less attractive for trading purpose.
First, the recent lows posted on January 23 at $24.03 for CBA (point A) and at $16.68 for NAB (point C) do not have the same significance on their own historical price action. For CBA, it was the lowest since 2003 whether for NAB it was a low that had not been posted since 1997.
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by Kris Sayce on March 4, 2009
As our Swarm Trading French technical analyst Gabriel Andre might say, “Sacre bleu!”
NineMSN Money yesterday quoted statistics from RP Data (commissioned for the Commonwealth Bank) which shows there are 74 suburbs in Australia where it is cheaper to buy a house with a mortgage rather than renting.
NineMSN Money claims that “With conditions favouring buyers, now could be the time to get into the market.”
Pardon us for being contrarian, but our initial reaction is – only 74 suburbs!
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by Kris Sayce on December 18, 2008
What a hullaballoo. Poor old Commonwealth Bank [ASX: CBA] has dragged itself through the mud in the last 24 hours.
It is supposedly the safest and most conservative bank in Australia, thanks to the millions of ‘Dollarmite’ and pensioners passbook accounts. You only have to look at the recent stats on the inflow of funds into retail banks to see that CBA grabbed the lions share.
As you will have read in the press, the CBA was using broking firm Merrill Lynch (now owned by Bank of America) to stiff retail investors by offering to sell shares at a discount to the prevailing market price.
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