Computer suppliers have been calling us over the past few days. They are telling us that barring a miracle, as the Australian dollar is currently sitting at its lowest levels in almost 20 years and still going south, that they cannot honour their current pricelists and new ones will soon be issued. I expect that the new computer hardware price will probably be at a 3-5% increase. We have stock in hand enough to last us till late March but after that our prices and everyone else prices will be going up.

The only good news now is that the Australian government stimulus package could help support the economy and the dollar. 

Anyway if you have now any plans to upgrade your computer system soon, now is the time to do it.

It is getting to the time of year when many of my clients will do a major part of their trade this year. I hope you have prepared. Among your other tasks, you will need now to make sure your stock ordering is right. This is something our point of sale can help you. You will also need to look into your staff levels again something our point of sale can help you with this too.

Overall, the Australian economy now is moving forward but only marginally.

In comparison, this is what it looks like on 4 Oct 2017.

The figures are roughly the same as the pluses and minus cancelling each other out. For example, the interest rates now are a bit lower but people have fewer savings because Australians are paying off debt rather than spending.

We are in the black (which is better than many countries), our major trading partners are growing, but their growth rates are down, so that does not look good for the future. It would be nice if we got some good exports going, we could use the money. 

There are signs that do appear to show that the yearly growing interest in Christmas trend is static.

Measured interest using Data Source: Google Trends (www.google.com/trends)."

What is still apparent is that the trend of a long Christmas season is continuing, two years ago when I measured it, it was about 6-7 weeks starting in mid-December, now it started in late November and you can expect it to continue to late January about 8-9 weeks period.
 

I was quite stunned after listening to all this bad economic news in Australia, saying that retail sales are down. Well here are the latest figures and retail figures are up 0.4 percent month-over-month in August 2019.

This was the fastest monthly rise in retail trade since February. Admittedly it was .1 percent below budget but that is hardly much of a difference. When does anyone get that close to budget?

As far as retail is concerned, I would say that the interest rate cuts and government tax rebates have worked. 

source: tradingeconomics.com

Unless the press is wrong again on May 18, it looks like we are going to an election. It could not happen quick enough in my view, I have never seen the economy brought to such a halt over an election. Clearly to business the issues are not minor here.