1. Good news goes on and on

The good economic news continues, with building approvals going through the roof. This couldn’t come at a better time, with the house price boom not only caused by historically low interest rates but by a lack of supply of properties. So it’s great news that in February total building approvals sky-rocketed by 21.6% against an economists’ survey of only 3%. This means approvals are up by a very strong 20.1% over the year to February. House approvals rose by 13.7% in February but are up by a whopping 57.9% over the year. Unit building approvals rose by 48.9% in February but are down 26.3% for the year and have been out of favour since 2017, when stories of construction problems spooked potential apartment buyers. And the Coronavirus has made houses rather than apartments even more popular.

2. Stocks love Biden’s spending spree

US President Joe Biden is on a $2 trillion spending spree to cancel out the negatives of the Coronavirus, and the stock market loved it. U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday led by technology shares, as investors weighed up and liked the potential impact from President Joe Biden’s infrastructure spending plan. President Biden will unveil a $2 trillion plus package in infrastructure spending that will help boost the US economic growth rate and create millions of jobs. The only catch is that it’s expected that the company tax rate will go up to 28% from 21% and big US companies will be discouraged from taking their profits overseas to enjoy lower tax rates. Despite this, big tech companies such as Apple and Microsoft were up strongly on the news.

3. Doomsdayers disappointed

Those doomsday merchants predicting economic troubles ahead won’t like the latest forecasts from the World Trade Organisation. Yes, they’re positive, with global trade tipped to rebound an unexpectedly strong 8% this year, the World Trade Organisation predicts, but only if the worldwide COVID-19 vaccination program maintains its pace, extends its reach and is not derailed by new variants. Economic stimulus from governments and central banks have helped trade flows to run ahead of pandemic-battered economies, the WTO said. Another bonus had been that many countries now “felt restraint” from throwing up new trade barriers. However, the AFR reported that the WTO said the opportunity provided by vaccine rollouts to restore global economic growth and trade flows could easily be “squandered” if vaccines were not widely distributed to as many countries as possible.

4. Gibberish tweet from US nuclear agency explained

There was some confusion last weekend when the official Twitter account of the US Strategic Command shared a tweet which read ";l;;gmlxzssaw". StratCom, which oversees the country's nuclear weapons, told freelance journalist Mikael Thalen that the tweet was posted by the "very young child" of their Twitter manager, and was not the result of a hack or the accidental release of nuclear launch codes as theorised by Twitter users.

5. S&P 500 up for the day, month and quarter

The S&P 500 rose by 14.34 points or 0.36% on Wednesday to 3,972.89. This put the index up 4.3% for March and up 5.8% for the quarter according to CNBC. The Dow Jones ended the day down 85.41 or 0.26% to 32,981.55, but the index was up 6.6% for the month and 7.8% for the quarter. The Nasdaq was the strongest performer of the day with a rise of 201.48 points or 1.54% to 13,246.87, lagging behind on a monthly and quarterly basis with rises of 0.4% and 2.8%, respectively.