Australia’s most expensive homes are leading the property downturn, with upper-quartile values down 10.7 per cent from their peak in Sydney and 10.5 per cent in Melbourne, while cheaper dwellings and units have generally proved more resilient.

The outlook could deteriorate further, with all four major banks now forecasting at least one more interest rate rise this year and some economists expecting two, after a warning from the RBA deputy governor Andrew Hauser.

Meanwhile, crude oil has hit $US100 a barrel after US strikes on Iranian tanker. That will put pressure on petrol prices and inflations.

Australia now has inflation that is still too high, lower economic growth, house prices falling, and cost-of-living pressures rising thanks to oil prices. It could be a rough few months for households and businesses.

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Greed-o-meter

Australian high school students have recorded their worst-ever maths and reading results in international tests - but we're not alone. Across the 36 OECD countries included in the study, average performance among 15-year-old students was the lowest ever recorded in all three core subjects: science, mathematics and reading.

Fear & Greed Q+A today

On Australians' obsession with loyalty points, and how these programs have become enormous businesses:

 

“Qantas copied the program from other airlines. They didn't invent the frequent flyer program concept, but they've been the best in the world at its execution.

 

I think Qantas has done an astonishing job both in its marketing but also broadening the points economy to all aspects of life. You can live almost a Qantas life today, in the sense of directing all of your behaviour to Qantas or its now 700 partners.

 

And that's very true of other loyalty programs as well, not just Qantas, but what they're trying to do is move you from what I call engagement in the book to enmeshment. And enmeshment, of course, has been a big part of the platform economy. We're all familiar with Apple and Google and other platforms where we as consumers have moved from being simply engaged and relatively transactional to being fully immersed and enmeshed.”

News in brief

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says One Nation’s plan to let renters and mortgage holders divert part of their compulsory super into take-home pay would weaken retirement savings and add $31 billion to annual pension costs by 2066.

The White House has warned Australia against proposed algorithm and tax measures targeting technology companies, just two weeks before Anthony Albanese is due to meet Donald Trump in New York.

Ghanda Clothing founder Guy Rudd has spent more than $4.4 million acquiring a 6.14 per cent stake in struggling KMD Brands, owner of Rip Curl, Kathmandu and Oboz.

Apple has launched its $US2,000 foldable iPhone Duo in new chief executive John Ternus’s first major test, hoping the device will revive the company’s reputation for innovation despite longstanding concerns about foldable phones.

OpenAI claims an unreleased AI model solved the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem in 88 hours, potentially marking a major breakthrough for AI-assisted mathematics if independently verified.

Fear-o-meter

Hugh Lam, Investment Strategist at Betashares, on cybersecurity in the AI era:

Late last month, more than 100 major tech companies including Alphabet, Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI issued an urgent joint letter calling for collective action to strengthen existing cyber defences in the age of AI.

While cybersecurity offerings have been around for decades, this wakeup call is a stark reminder that current status quo security is no longer sufficient. Longstanding bugs, excessive permissions and weak authentication in legacy systems have left the attack surface area wider and more exposed than ever.

At the same time, offensive capabilities have been turbocharged by advanced AI technologies which have increased both the frequency and sophistication of new attacks such as deepfake impersonations and social engineering. Beyond tech, rising geopolitical conflicts and reconfiguration of globalisation should continue to drive the need for more robust cyber defences.

More recently however, the sense of urgency follows an alarming AI-enabled cyber attack on Hugging Face, an open-source collaboration platform for AI and machine learning.

From an investment perspective, cybersecurity has become one of the most enduring thematics over the last decade and will likely remain so given the considerations above.

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