Its Over, page-2798

Scomo's $130B Jobkeeper 6 month $1500 wage subsidy is certainly a much needed welcome move, but I found that strange that it didn't come with a more stringent containment measure closer to what UK and NZ are doing.

The idea of a wage subsidy is to ensure wage earners have cashflow to survive while in " shutdown" and to keep them in their employers' payroll BUT that in itself is not solving the COVID-19 health crisis if there is no mandatory form of lockdown and when I say this, there is no exception other than essential services (hospitals, pharmacies, banks, clinics and emergency and defence, police/enforcement) ( and no , hairdressing and UBER are not essential services) .

The point of a wage subsidy I would have thought would be to tie people through a lockdown situation that is necessary to stop the transmission effectively. And if we can do that in 1-2 months, then the actual subsidy may well be less.

Hence the Jobkeeper subsidy addresses the economic fallout but again not the virus!

And I think the local market is not seeing it clearly. The wage subsidy is largely going to food and survival and will not do much to lift the economy.

And we are seeing the XJO being gamed again, with almost half of its 7% rise coming from the last 12 minutes of trade! From past trading sessions, we know this is usually not sustainable in following sessions. And don't be too surprise if the ASX fails to follow up its gains tomorrow even if it is a good green day on Wall St tonight.