29 March 2024
1300 794 893

Come back to the city and pick up your winnings as you pass go!

Peter Switzer
26 November 2020

This has been a great week in Australian history and the stock market has marked it with another positive week, taking the share market index for our top 200 companies to its best month ever!

This run of fantastic news (including better-than-expected vaccine revelations) must come as a bitter pill to swallow for those pessimists who’ve doubted the beating of the Coronavirus, the calibre of our governments’ responses and the economic rescue plan that’s working in spades, as the stock market is telling us.

And significantly, this good market news has come in a week when we learnt that normal Victorian and Queensland borders were set to go back to their usual status. And now there’s news that barriers stopping the proper operation of the Sydney CBD from getting back to normality will be removed, increasing the eradication of everything most of us have hated about what the Coronavirus brought to our cities and our lives.

Of course, Melbourne has to wait to get back to a normal CBD but the tide is turning, and by New Year we’ll see and feel the pay-off from successfully fighting that damn virus.

In contrast, the Brits are set to see their economy shrink by 11% in 2020, while our economy could be closer to 3%. In April, we were told we’d contract by 10%. In June, the economists shrunk their economic shrinkage readings to 4.5%. Since then, our economy has continued to go gangbusters, so the final contraction could be even smaller!

In March, the Sydney CBD was like a desolate scene from a sci-fi movie. I know this because we needed to use our TV studio for my Switzer TV Investing show and other productions that kept our staff in their jobs on their normal pay.

It was me, a few hardy office workers (who may have thought the Coronavirus was less threatening than working at home with their kids!) and some shuffling blokes who live on the streets. And there were café owners and shopkeepers who you’d often see in their doorways hoping a customer might brave it and come to town.

That was then. But this is now. And on December 14 that will change for Sydney, with the Premier Gladys Berejiklian answering the call of the Business Council of Australia. Yep, the Premier will take away the prevailing public health order in 18 days’ time, which required employers to allow employees to work from home unless it was absolutely necessary they were in the office.

Businesses in the CBD will be cheering, while suburban cafes might have to adjust to a life with less customers than they’ve had since the Coronavirus changed our normal life back in March.

Big business has followed this health directive to the letter of the law but I bet a lot of small business owners will be surprised to hear about this public health order.

The AFR says the “Business Council head Jennifer Westacott said the latest easing of restrictions, which included a lifting on household and outdoor gatherings to up to 50 people, was proof NSW had the right COVID-systems in place.”

And Jen got it right when she added: “The government has given new hope and confidence to the business community of NSW, who can now make decisions in time for Christmas…people’s jobs depend on finding ways to live alongside this virus and NSW is leading the way.”

Sydney is progressively coming back to life and taking away this public health order will mean big business will have the confidence to tell their employees that it’s time get out of the leisure wear, put on the suit and come back to work.

We now await Melbourne’s chance to embrace normality, as the other state capitals, who are already ahead of the country’s two biggest cities in the normalisation process, continue the economic repair job that has been helping drive our stock market higher.

We’re a highly interdependent society and world, as the Coronavirus showed us, but you underestimate our ability to beat pandemic-style problems at your peril. And those who bet against the governments of the world, and ours in particular, have lost out big time on the stock market.

And won’t dry cleaners be popping champagne tonight, along with stock market players, who’ve seen the S&P/ASX 200 Index up 12.7%! This is the price of being a pessimist!

Comments
Get the latest financial, business, and political expert commentary delivered to your inbox.

When you sign up, we will never give away or sell or barter or trade your email address.

And you can unsubscribe at any time!
Subscribe
1300 794 893
© 2006-2021 Switzer. All Rights Reserved. Australian Financial Services Licence Number 286531. 
shopping-cartphoneenvelopedollargraduation-cap linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram