The World Cup kicks off this week, with Russia hosting FIFA’s quadrennial footballing spectacle. An estimated 3.4 billion viewers are set to tune in to watch some of sport’s biggest stars vie for international glory. On the surface, that type of exposure would appear to be invaluable to the host nation. However, most studies do not find any material economic benefit to hosts of large international events such as the World Cup. Asset prices are a slightly different story. Hosts’ equity markets tend to rally ahead of the event. Of the five previous hosts, only one, Brazil, did not experience

Suppliers of iron ore and their investors might be encouraged by the recent upward trend in ore prices. Exhibit 1 shows a longer term trend. In it, you can see that iron ore prices are still well off their highs of 2012. The better news is in Exhibit 2, which shows that those prices may have hit a low during 2015. The recent surge in prices came quickly and now stands about double where they were at the low point. Exhibit 1. Iron ore prices – long term trend Source: Eikon/Datastream/Fathom Consulting Exhibit 2. Iron ore prices – short term

Last year, we argued that Australia had several aces up its sleeve helping it to avoid recession despite the downturn in its largest trading partner — China. We were right. Now, China appears to be throwing in the towel on rebalancing and doubling down in a bid to kick-start growth. Refresh the chart in your browser | Edit chart in Datastream Last week, after keeping policy on hold for a year, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut the cash rate by 25 basis points to an all-time low of 1.75%. That decision came less than a week after data

Many global oil and gas and metals and mining companies’ balance sheets are looking strained. With that in mind, we turned our attention to Australia to see if the same trend exists in that region. What we found is surprising. The chart below shows all the metal and mining companies in Australia with a market cap of over $1 billion. While there are many such miners and exploration companies in the region and some of them have a lot of leverage, one thing that sets this area apart is that most generate positive free cash flow. In fact, of all