RBA Monetary Policy Statements - Last three months

Been playing around with VBA in excel trying to create word clouds and the like.

One of the areas I have been focusing on is the Monetary Policy releases from the RBA. Trying to detect changes in tone etc to see if I can accurately predict the next move in interest rates from the language.

Couple of interesting things from the last three months.

1. The RBA seems to be focusing on more local issues now...in the May RBA release, there is no mention of another country except China, as opposed to March and April which mentioned the Euro Zone and the US.

2. A lot more present tense use. Less waiting for something to happen and now more is happening.

3. Number of words in the statements are increasing. From 428 words in March to 486 in May. Trying to justify it's lack of movement perhaps

4. "Fragile" has disappeared from the word list and "Strong" has now appeared

5. Using a very basic weighting system assigned to each word to reflect a "positive" value as opposed to a negative value, I have the language improving over the last few months, from a weighting of 21 in March to 33 in May.

So based on this, it certainly does seem that the RBA will increase rates before decreasing hem. But it is looking inward at the moment, probably because of the budget tomorrow night. Less about the externals, more about the internals at this time.

Least Profitable Movies with 2013 Equivalent Budgets of $100 million of more

Using the same methodology as the previous posts, I wanted to see what were the top 10 box office bombs...those movies with a budget of $100 million or more (in 2013 equivalent dollars) that had the worse profitability. And here they are...

1. The Adventures of Pluto Nash
2. Heavens Gate
3. Mars needs Moms
4. The Postman
5. Hudson Hawk
6. Timeline
7. Virus
8. Red Planet
9. The 13th Warrior
10. Son of the Mask

Quality list of the dodgiest movies of all time!

Most profitable Movies - in 2013 dollars

Being a big fan of movies, I stumbled upon some data from Nate Silvers blog (fivethirtyeight.com). Basically gave you a list of around 1600 movies since the 1970's and their budgets and revenues (and also adjusted to 2013 dollars so you could do an accurate comparison). So using this data you could actually get the gross profits over a period of time for a lot of movies.

Now I was interested in the most profitable movies based on revenue per dollar of budget. (sort of an inverse gross profit ratio). Surprising figures really..all the big movies aren't really in the list, due to those large budgets. The top 10 most profitable movies are, in order from most profitable are :-

Paranormal Activity

The Blair Witch Project
El Mariachi
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Towering Inferno
Rocky
American Graffiti
Clerks.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
In the Company of Men

Horror seems to be the best option really, with 4 in the top 10. Paranormal Activity made $610 revenue per dollar of budget. Not bad if you were bankrolling that beauty.

The School holiday effect: Consistant January drop in Female Part Time Work

Just been looking at one of my favourite ABS releases, the detailed Labour force stats...a veritable treasure trove of info on Australian work habits and demographics.

One thing I have been looking at is Part Time workers between 15-64. I notice a very strong seasonal signal in the Female Part time stats as a percentage of the civilan population. In January of most years, it appears there is a drop of around 1.5-2% consistantly. See the graph below

The same signal is not as apparent in Male Part time work (or if it is, it is too small to be detectable)

So what would make women drop part time work so consistently over January?

It's either school kids or the beach in my opinion.

Budget Emergency! Maybe this is what Joe Hockey has nightmares about

Loss of Male Power and Identity - the decline of Male Full time work.

I'm always interested in gender politics and the like, and I wonder what the affect of the reduction in Full time work is having on the male population. Because the drop is dire.

Looking at the ABS figures on the Labor force, I note that the percentage of the male civilian population (15-64) that is employed full time is at all time lows...in fact August 2013 was the lowest ever recorded at 64.66%; the second lowest in Jan 2014.

This is in comparison to the all time high of 79.4% which was recorded in December 1980.

Now when you think the male identity is traditionally defined by being a provider, especially in a family situation, this has to have an impact on the male psych.

I'm sure the feminists out there will be talking about how the female full time employment to population ratio is still low at 36%, well, to that I say, at least it is on the climb (it was at 30% in 1978). Also women traditionally have other sources of power and identity that remain undiminished; the primary one being that of a mother, which does not require the full time job to self actualise.

Something to think on when the feminists are calling for total equality. See the graph below for the full details

Market risk Premium of ASX200 March 2014....Now at 12.5%!!!!!!!

Wow is all I can say.

Calculated the Market Risk premium of March 2014 and we are looking at a risk premium of 12.5% Getting pretty crazy out there.

ASX200 market return (Capital) over the last 2.5 years is sitting at 11.61% a year. Average dividends of 4.57%. Meaning the Market has returned a very nice 16.18% a year. Not bad going.

Risk free rate is now sitting at around 3.67% so that leaves us a Market Risk Premium of 12.5%! That is the highest it has been since I started recording them back in 2011.

For mine, that is getting a bit unsustainable. You would have to start thinking a big correction is coming as there is no way companies out there can have their equity cost of capital at those sort of levels. They can't have a ROE of over that consistently in the current conditions.