Stephen Thaxter- Principal and Senior Adviser
Sovereign Wealth Partners
There are things that make you go hmmm and for some of us it’s the occasional chart that makes us stop and think. We’ve seen a few head scratchers recently and so with no further ado, allow us to share some charts that made us go “hmmm”:
1. The lucky country
I had no idea that Australia’s booming immigration is set to put us on top of the world in terms of annual population growth for the next 25 years (according to UBS). And because immigrants tend to be quite young, the median age of Australians is expected to be under 42 by 2050, which is 5 years younger than OECD averages. This is great news for our economy – an aging population no more! So come on, let’s build some more houses!
Source: UBS via Firetrail
Source: National Accounts via Firetrail
2 Sticking your neck out
No wonder markets are volatile when the investors can’t agree what’s going on. The red line in the chart below tells us that throughout the last year around 60% of economists have been predicting a recession in the US. It hasn’t happened yet, but the economists are still tipping it. So are many of the fund managers we talk to and pretty much all the bond managers! Yet the pointy heads at Goldman Sachs put that probability at just 15%. That’s quite the call. Hero or zero?
3 Mexico overtakes China
The US/China standoff is really starting to bite. According to Bank of America, Mexico has just overtaken China as the US’s 2nd largest import trading partner. The US’s largest import partner remains Canada. And before you ask, the Mexico’s biggest export is vehicles, not tequila!
