So here we are in December 2023 (18 months after I started this thread) and inflation has been declining for the last two quarters. The cost of living still seems pretty high though, and the RBA raised interest rates 4 weeks ago. The US has not raised rates since July 2023. The US and Australian economy's appear to be quite strong, but at the same time the average person is struggling to make ends meet. The US S&P500 closed just shy of 4600 (rallying nearly 500 points from it's lows in October) and yet the ASX has been a dangerous market as the traders sell any rally with the expectation of a correction in the US markets (that hasn't come as yet). Investors seeking a haven have flocked to gold, pushing it to all time highs of $2075 per ounce, and oil has been falling hard pre-empting a fall in demand as the economy cools. Most of my equities have done very little over the past few months, and some have taken a battering, but admittedly I'm holding fairly defensive stocks like COL APA AZJ CSR WDS & recently iLU and very few of them have great looking charts but they all pay a regular dividend and I would expect all of them to recover over time. In hindsight I wish I would have had swopped a few for bank stocks which have been benefiting from higher interest rates. Anyway, one of my best investments has been physical gold, so it will be interesting to see what it all looks like in another 18 months.
