It’s Tuesday the 13th of May 2025, and Woolies cuts prices potentially triggering supermarket wars, the PM announces his new Cabinet, and an Australian volunteer has died in Ukraine. Plus BHP's jackpot discovery high in the Andes, and the US and China do a temporary trade deal.
Get ready for grocery wars with Woolworths announcing that it will cut the price of 400 products by ten per cent, a move likely to trigger a response from major competitors Coles, IGA and Aldi.
PM Anthony Albanese announced his new Cabinet yesterday, with most of the top jobs unchanged – Richard Marles in Defence, Jim Chalmers as Treasurer, Katy Gallagher in Finance, Penny Wong as Foreign Minister, Mark Butler in Health but also overseeing the NDIS. In terms of changes, Michelle Rowland has been appointed A-G and Tanya Plibersek has shifted from Environment to Social Services. Senator Murray Watt will move to Environment.
An Australian man has died in Ukraine while volunteering with a humanitarian and mine-clearance charity. Nick Parsons was killed last week in an incident in the country’s war-torn east, while working with Prevail Together, a US and UK-based group that sends volunteers into Ukraine.
BHP’s push into Argentinian copper has been boosted by the discovery that its deposit high in the Andes contains at least five times more of the metal than initially thought.
The US and China have agreed to cut tariffs for 90 days, effective immediately, in a bid to de-escalate a simmering trade war that has hit global markets.
Fear-o-meter
With a bit of luck, we are in for a price war at the supermarkets. Woolworths yesterday announced it was cutting prices by ten per cent across 400 items, mostly home brands. It wants to keep the prices low into next year.
It needs to because Woolies' growth rate has been falling behind arch-rival Coles and it is trying to acquire market share. Between them, the two supermarket giants control 73 per cent of the market while Aldi has ten per cent.
Woolies and Coles have a bit of public relations work to do as well after allegations of price gouging and misleading specials, and no doubt yesterday’s announcement will help.
It is hard to conceive that Coles won’t respond, but neither supermarket really wants a price war, given skinny profit margins. Still, consumers should win from the announcement yesterday.
Who's talking today?
A 101 on the insurance industry, from the outlook for premiums, through to how insurers make money:
"The insurance industry's profit profile goes up and down like a roller coaster. It is unlike other financial services that often have a very consistent profit, gradual growth year on year. So with insurers, we're very much event driven. And you can see over the last five out of six years, some of the very large extreme weather events like the bushfires and then the floods had a real hit to the bottom line for insurers. At the same time risk appetite for investing in insurance had become very tight.
What we're seeing now is that we actually have had a much quieter 12 months weather-wise... and what we are seeing is that profits are coming back quickly to the insurance sector, but they're really recovering to levels that they were at 10 years ago."
Bitcoin crossed the $US100,000 threshold last week for the first time since February, and is nearing its record of around $109,000 (which was recorded on January 20, the day US President Donald Trump was inaugurated). There are thousands of cryptocurrencies out there, but Bitcoin dominates the entire scene. The other high profile tokens don't get anywhere near it in unit price or market cap.
On Thursday, Sean Aylmer and Adam Lang from the Fear & Greed team will set off on a 380km journey through country NSW, riding all the way from Bourke to Narromine.
380km is a long way for two novice cyclists, but they're doing it for a very good cause: Royal Far West's Ride For Country Kids. The goal is to raise as much money as possible to improve life options for children from rural communities.
They've nearly hit their fundraising target, so if you can help them get across the line, it will be gratefully appreciated. You can donate here. And we're giving supporters a shout-out on the podcast too!
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