1. ScoMo lifts us up, up and away!

The Morrison Government wants us to start flying again and is prepared to fund us to fly to local tourism destinations. This is a part of the Government’s targeted support for the travel industry with $1.2 billion to be made available for 800,000 local travellers to fly and holiday in Australian destinations at half price. And there will be taxpayer-funded “retention payments” to both Qantas and Virgin that will be made between April and October, after which international travel is expected to resume, thanks to vaccinations. These payments are to be made to keep 8,600 airline staff in jobs until that time. And there will be low interest loans for small businesses hurt by the lack of foreign tourists and therefore have been dependent on JobKeeper payments.

2. Roaring 20s looks likely

Our economy has had another dose of great economic readings.  Yep, and what we’ve seen reduces concerns that the economy will fall over a fiscal cliff when JobKeeper is finished at the end of March. Yesterday the Westpac Consumer Sentiment index rose by 2.6% in March to 111.8 – the second highest reading in seven years (any reading above 100 points says optimists outnumber pessimists). And on Tuesday, the NAB business confidence index rose from 12 points in January to an 11-year high of 16.4 in February. The long-term average for business confidence is only 5.1, showing just how big this spike in confidence is. Confident businesses is great news for future job creation.

3. US inflation concerns exaggerated

Data out overnight  says concerns that inflation is getting out of control in the US is largely exaggerated, which  good news for the stock market. US stocks spiked overnight on a tame inflation number, which ordinarily would not be a big news item, but in recent times we’ve seen the stock market sell off strongly on fears that inflation would get out of control, forcing interest rates to rise.  This  concern explains why a lot of tech stocks like Tesla in the US and Afterpay here have been dumped recently. The US consumer price index came in at only 0.4% for February, taking the annual rate to 1.7%. This should be good news for the local stock market here today as we play follow the leader with Wall Street.

4. Brisbane baker scammed out of dough

A Brisbane-based baker has lost "a substantial amount of cash" after being contacted by a scammer via social media to make a personalised birthday cake filled with money. When the suspect collected the cake, they showed the victim a bank transfer receipt that turned out to be fake. "Police are reminding the community to always take precautions when conducting business using social media platforms," Queensland Police said.

5. Dow closes at new record high

After reaching intraday highs during the previous two sessions, on Wednesday the Dow Jones closed at an all-time high of 32,297.02 after rising 464.28 points or 1.46%. The S&P 500 rose 23.37 points or 0.60% to 3,898.81, while the Nasdaq dipped 4.99 points or 0.038% to 13,068.83.