Fast Five | 12-13 Sep 2026

0:00Shop vans and Albertsons for fresh savings every time you shop. This week at vans and Albertsons, get fresh, boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $199 per pound limit 10 pounds. And locally grown, grape-ary cotton candy grapes are $299 per pound with digital coupon. Plus, 24 packs of Canada Dry or 7-Up 12-ounce cans are $499 limit one with digital coupon. Enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in! These deals won't last. Visit vans or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. Welcome to the Saturday edition of the Fast 5 Business News. By fear and greed, I'm Michael Thompson and hello, Sean Aelner. Hello, Michael. Sean, on the weekdays, it's all about Fast 5, the top 5 business stories in five minutes. On the weekend, it's still five minutes, of course. But we are going to go through some of the biggest and most interesting stories of the past seven days. And pick out a few different categories that we think are pretty interesting.

1:00Let's kick things off with our first category, which is rates, interest rates. Will they all want to they? And I think I've got the easier side to argue on this one, Sean, that I think rates are going to go up again. And I'm not alone in saying that either. Basically, every one of the big four banks are tipping another rate hike this year. A lot of market economists all tipping this is going to happen. And we had this week, the Reserve Bank, Deputy Governor Andrew Hauser and Chief Economist Sarah Hunter both out in the media flagging that inflation is still too high. And that hey, the Reserve Bank may need to take action if they see it as necessary. But honestly, we've got economic growth that came in over the last couple of weeks stronger than expected. So really, the economy is not yet kind of grinding to a halt. Households are still spending a bit of money. That as I mentioned, underlay inflation proving to be very sticky and you've got the price of oil, just kind of shooting well past $100 US dollars a barrel, those inflation expectations, then really become what's the word?

2:02You don't want them to become entrenched? Yes, that is the word. I mean, look, you're probably right. I mean, I was away for a couple of weeks. So no way there was going to be a rate rise. I come back two weeks later and there was definitely going to be a rate rise. Fickle market place, who'd want to be a market economist? I mean, the economy is slowing it, Tatum. The unemployment is rising, a tad. Oil price, it's going thing that's going on at the moment. Means underlying inflation will be a challenge. But a household spending is still pretty weak. We've already had three hikes in the beginning of this year. They take a long time to take full impact. I just don't think it's a lay down museum. No, no, it's at, look, we will see. I mean, we've got a rate high at Reserve Bank meeting this month. Another one in November. We could have one hike. We could have two hikes. We could have no hikes. It's all part of the big mystery of the economy. Let's get onto story number two. The marketing ploys of the week. This is fun. Sean, what did you pick out for this? Because I, I, I, I, yeah, just take us through it. I love the fact that Starbucks is spending a billion US dollars

3:05to make its cafes feel less like somewhere that you grab a coffee and more like somewhere you might actually want to stay. They're talking leather arm, chairs, rugs, books. They want people to linger over a latte. Their argument basically lives are increasingly lived online. It wants its cafes to become places for actual human connection. I'm going to use its words in our ASIS for people feeling lonely and disconnected. Conveniently, lonely and disconnected. People also buy coffee. So that's their point to get people to hang around Starbucks. I kind of like the idea. What if we like being lonely and disconnected? Sean, I don't know about that. The marketing ploy of the week for me was the NFL and the game yesterday at the MCG in Melbourne. What a spectacle. What a place to hold it and what a marketing exercise for that sport here in Australia. And the NFL is trying to establish a bit of a presence here.

4:07But I also love the other brands that were piggybacking off this as well. In particular, Qantas, who was the official airline partner of the game. Their Chartered A380s. And the fact that they marketed the absolute heck out of that. And all the stories about how much food they had to carry on the planes in order to keep all of the players well fed during it. And the fact that just a little side note, that bookings from the US to Australia rose 50% year on year during the fortnight leading into the game. A lot of interest. A lot of people coming over. All right, next category. Investing on the edge. Now, I don't know where the mine is actually investing on the edge or just it is just something that is always there and underpinning everything that we do. But Bond's bond yields, Sean, have been soaring recently. And we've been talking about it a lot. Investors getting nervous about the Iran war, the price of oil, the inflation outlook, the amount of national debt.

5:08And as some commentary, really interesting commentary from Shane Oliver, Chief Economist at AMP. This week talking about the, for instance, the Australian 10-year bond yield at 5.2% six years ago, it was 0.5%. And it matters for all of us. It matters for investors as well because a bunch of reasons that governments have to pay more when they borrow companies have hired debt repayments. It makes kind of fixed mortgage rates higher and less enticing for borrowers. But it has a negative impact on shares and other asset classes because suddenly investors who are looking for returns that have previously gone into shares and property, for instance, now go, hey, I could get perhaps more than 5% on my money in Bond, which has considered almost a risk-free asset class. And that hits other assets like equities. Indeed, investing on the edge for me, maybe edgy investing is better way of putting it private credit funds. Had a couple of big collapses or struggles in the residential construction.

6:08Bathlow was one. There was a big site in Sydney's West, $270 million alone, to faulty the actual asset value worth $200 million. Doesn't mean private credit in residential is bad, but it's just going through a tough time, a bit edgy in terms of investing at the moment. All right, bring it home with dodgy promises. This is our final category. What did you pick at? There's really one ultimate dodgy promise this week, isn't there? Donald Trump promising $5,000 US dollars to every one of the 270 million adult people across the United States of America, if the Republicans win the Senate and the House in the midterms, it'll cost about $1.31.4 trillion dollars. Do you call this a bribe? No, not a bribe. Sure, that sounds like a dividend to me. That's right, Donald Trump said it was a dividend. There you go. Anyway, I just don't even know what to say on that. I think that will do us as the dodgy promise of the week. Five minutes and pretty much everything you need to know in the world of business.

7:11Thanks, Sean. Thanks, Michael. Make sure you're following the podcast. Head to fearingrie.com.au to sign up for our free daily newsletter. I'm Michael Thompson, and it's the Fast Five Business News by Fearingrie.