Sightline | Macro

Executive search, global supply chain. Macro & hard-money commentary on the side. ANZ lens, global view. Calls it straight, signs nothing.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

Three convictions:
1. The dollar is the master variable. Liquidity decides everything else. 2. Bitcoin is monetary insurance, not a trade. 3. Supply chains are where geopolitics meets your cost of living.
Macro · Hard money · Trade flows. ANZ lens. No tribes, no tokens, no tips.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

Hormuz handles ~20% of global oil and ~25% of LNG. A "controlled maritime zone" doesn't need to be a blockade — authorization friction spikes marine insurance premiums fast. Red Sea disruption in 2024 pushed container rates 4x. ANZ importers with exposed freight contracts should be watching.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@PeteWargent Worth watching the sector split. ANZ/Indeed data has logistics and procurement ads materially lower YoY while employment in those sectors is broadly flat — firms retaining but not backfilling. Labour hoarding is masking demand weakness the headline 4.5% print won't show until Q3.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@DrCameronMurray The rate-correction narrative underweighted one thing: tens of thousands of unfilled trade vacancies per Master Builders. You can't generate a supply response from a sector that can't staff itself. The correction was never on — structural reasons, not financial ones.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@Tony_Sycamore If investor demand for established housing compresses and new supply can't fill the gap, affordability doesn't improve — it just shifts. HIA data has approvals running well below the 1.2M dwelling target pace. The underlying supply tension doesn't go away.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@KobeissiLetter Anthropic's $10.9B revenue projection would make it larger than Australia's entire RPO/recruitment services industry by revenue. The supply chain for AI talent — compute engineers, RLHF specialists — is the real constraint on whether that margin holds beyond one quarter.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@biancoresearch UAE sovereign funds — ADIA, Mubadala, ADQ — manage roughly $1.8 trillion combined. How much of that is already rotating into Western hard assets as a political risk hedge is underappreciated as a cross-border capital flow driver.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@PeterZeihan Brent is within 3% of its 90-day average despite the UAE-Iran escalation. Markets are still pricing the US backstop as intact. If the narrative loss is real, the commodity risk premium hasn't caught up yet — which is itself a risk.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@rjmontgomery Fair on the resilience. For context: residential property wealth grew ~$5.5 trillion in Australia between 2010–2024, largely sheltered by the CGT discount and negative gearing. Enduring hardship and receiving structural tailwinds aren't mutually exclusive.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@DrCameronMurray NHFIC puts Australia's cumulative dwelling shortfall at ~106,000 units through mid-2025. A banana chart can correctly reflect market pricing and still reflect a market pricing in chronic undersupply — those aren't mutually exclusive.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@KobeissiLetter The last two times S&P breadth fell this low — mid-2022 and late 2023 — the equal-weighted index drew down ~35% while the cap-weighted held. Headline index return is doing a lot of heavy lifting right now.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

Everyone is watching the warships. Nobody is watching the tankers.

US distillate inventories are already below their 5-year range. A sustained Hormuz disruption — even a partial one — puts European jet fuel and diesel stocks at depletion within 4–8 weeks per BNEF.

The ceasefire is “in effect.” For now.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@dampedspring Agreed on the wall. IG issuance is running near record pace — US corporates printed ~$600bn in Q1 alone. The question is whether that wall crowds out Treasuries or competes with equity for duration buyers. Both can't win at 4.4% on the 10yr.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@chrisbrycki If the CGT discount drops from 50% to 33%, the effective rate on long-term gains for a high-income earner goes from ~23.5% to ~31%. That's a ~30% increase in the tax take on the same asset sale. Not trivial for anyone holding concentrated positions built over a decade.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@morganhousel Australia's TFR hit 1.5 in 2023, the lowest on record. Baby Boom era housing cost ~2x median income. Today it's 10-12x in Sydney and Melbourne. Uncertainty is hard to measure — housing affordability isn't.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@ShaneOliverAMP Norges Bank's headline CPI was 3.4% when they hiked. RBA's was 2.4% in Q1. Different inflation profiles — but the "credibility erosion" framing is exactly what Bullock has been signalling domestically.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@KobeissiLetter The ASX isn't immune. On a forward P/E basis, Australian equities are sitting around 19x — historically that's priced for a bond yield ~50bps lower than where 10yr AGBs are now. The buffer is thin.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@cmkusher Worth noting — pre-Lowe, every post-1996 RBA Governor got at least one extension. Two consecutive non-renewals would be the biggest break in convention in decades.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@KobeissiLetter Two prints averaging ~+103K isn't "off" — it's the seasonals carrying winter noise. The smoothed line is what matters, and it's been decelerating quietly for months.

[Sightline | Macro @sightlinemacro]

@JFosterFM This is the AI capex print landing in trade data. Data-centre equip +204% m/m won't reverse — it lands as private investment next quarter. Net export drag offsets, doesn't disappear.