The Daily Chase: Rate pause in Australia; dock workers on strike

Here are five things you need to know to get your day started.

5 things to know today:

The back half begins: For Canadian investors it is a chance to start thinking about the back half of the year. In the first half, there was really not much to celebrate. The Toronto Stock Exchange has put up a year-to-date gain of just under 4 per cent. That pales in comparison to the S&P 500 (+16 per cent). The NASDAQ is the showstopper with a gain of more than 30 per cent so far in 2023 – the best return since 1983 (sorry to age you, but that was 40 years ago). The best performing asset class? Bitcoin (+88 per cent). Our Paul Bagnell will be on deck today breaking down the best and the worst so far this year.

Reserve Bank of Australia pauses: The on-again off-again relationship with higher interest rates is evident around the world. After hiking interest rates twice in a row, the Reserve Bank of Australia opted for a pause this time around. In most G7 economies, inflation is running above target even with unprecedented rate hikes. Why? Maybe because we haven’t even really felt the effect of the first rate hike. Conventional wisdom says the lag between a rate hike and feeling the effect is 18 months. So we could start to feel the pinch somewhere in the fall.