Sharemarket and Market Trading News

Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, who is also director of the United Nations Millennium Project, says in a talk he gave in Beijing that there are four stages of economic development: pre-commercial, commercial, industrial and knowledge. Thus a country has to make three transformations to get to the wealthiest stage and can get trapped at any of them.

Most African countries are pre-commercial because the rural economy is so isolated from the urban economy that there's little exchange between the two and so little scope for exploiting economies of scale.

Sydney real estate property prices have fallen 10 per cent since the boom ended in late 2003 - and by 2.3 per cent in the last quarter - a Bureau of Statistics survey has revealed, suggesting the market slump is deeper, more protracted and from a lower peak than previously thought.

The downturn is creating opportunities for potential first-home buyers and bargain hunters, but a seller who bought a property in the past three years is likely to lose money if forced to sell, after stamp duty and real estate costs.

The Australian dollar opened nearly one US cent higher on Tuesday as weaker-than-expected US economic figures underpinned the gains.

However, the local unit's moves are expected to be capped by a slew of data releases this week.

At 7am (AEDT), the local unit was trading at US74.30¢, compared with Monday's close of US73.40¢.

Overnight, it reached a low of US73.23¢ and a high of US74.53¢.

Westpac Bank senior currency strategist Richard Franulovich said the weaker-than-expected US home sales figures boosted the Australian dollar.