Thanks for spending your Thursday with us! We'll be back bright and early to do it all again tomorrow for the final time this week.
Until then, you can catch up on today's developments below.
And if you're sweltering in Brisbane like me (it's still 35 degrees as I type!), hopefully you can make like this pup ASAP.
Your guess is as good as mine I'm afraid, Andrew — and it's not from a lack of digging on my end, trust me!
Star Entertainment's shares picked up 3.8% on the ASX today at the close (in dollar terms, that's $0.005) to close at $0.135.
It may well be people picking up shares while they're cheap and hoping the company won't collapse, or it could be another secret investor buying them. It could even be both, or neither, or something else entirely ... if I find my crystal ball, I'll report back!
(And if you are an investor with Star, have been picking up shares or selling them off, drop my colleague Emilia Terzon a line at Terzon.Emilia@abc.net.au.)
The ASX 200 has ended the day 1.4% higher, closing at 8,327 points on Thursday.
All sectors finished in positive territory, with the largest gains recorded by banks (+2.5%) and real estate stocks (+2.4%).
The rise on the local share market followed a strong performance on Wall Street overnight, after a number of banks reported their financial results and US inflation cooled more than expected in December — keeping hopes alive for another rate cut by the US Federal Reserve.
As for the best performing individual stocks today:
As for those at the other end of the scale:
Australia's High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea appears to have taken a coded swipe at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for awarding development contracts to foreign state-owned companies.
"We are concerned where people don't use local companies, where they are available, and don't use local labour," High Commissioner John Feakes said.
The remarks were made during the signing of a contract to redevelop a major port in PNG with funding from the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific.
Australia has committed $621.4 million in loans and grants to overhaul four large ports and one tidal basin in PNG between now and 2029.
The first cab off the rank is the Kimbe port, with Queensland company Pacific Marine Group winning a $107.7 million contract to complete the marine work.
High Commissioner Feakes said the project would create 300 local jobs during the construction phase.
He said landside works were only tendered to Papua New Guinean companies, with contracts to be awarded in coming days.
"I want to contrast this approach with some of our multilateral development partners, who rely almost exclusively on foreign state-owned firms which deliver without local labour and sometimes without local supplies," he said.
Australia will contribute $492 million to the Asian Development Bank over the next four years, but the government has raised concerns about the organisation awarding contracts to Chinese state-owned entities.
Graeme Smith from the Australian National University said other development partners including the US and New Zealand shared the concerns.
"The (Chinese state-owned) companies have been involved in the past in encouraging countries for example to move away from Taiwan and towards China," he said.
"As for the ports themselves, the geopolitical aspect of it would be that if you build the port, you have a great deal of knowledge about the port, but it's not as though you kind of have the launch codes."
Professor Smith said some Chinese companies had adapted to the Pacific environment and employed locals, while others tended not to.
"It really depends on the company. There's been no shortage of dud projects done by Australian companies in the Pacific," he said.
Pacific Marine Group CEO Terry Dodd said his company had experience working in PNG over three decades.
"When we come to PNG is to try to use as many local contractors as we can, we use as many local staff as we can, we spend a lot of time upskilling, training people," he said.
ADB has been contacted for comment.
Emilia jumping in for a second here.
I've been reporting on Star Entertainment's woes this week as the casino operator's share price sits at near record lows and speculation continues that it is going belly up.
The ABC would like to speak to people who have shares in Star or have sold them off in recent times as they've tanked.
Is this you? Send me a confidential email on terzon.emilia@abc.net.au and we can talk (even off record!)
It's crunch time over in the US, with TikTok set to be banned in the country this weekend.
But there's still a few moving parts: TikTok's China-based parent company, ByteDance, could still sell its US operations — not to mention that the US Supreme Court could still step in.
For now, the ban is set to come into effect on Sunday, January 19 — the day before Donald Trump is inaugurated, and has reportedly vowed to "save TikTok".
So what does the ban mean, and what could the fallout look like? ABC Entertainment's Rachel Rasker has unpacked it for us 👇
Hi Phillip,
It's a fair question, and you've come to the right place to ask it.
(And spoiler alert, no, the ABS isn't somehow secretly monitoring you!)
I'll keep it brief, but the short(ish) answer is that the ABS uses a survey of the Australian population to collect the data that forms its labour force statistics.
Not every Australian aged 15 and over is surveyed though — the ABS has a very particular methodology when it comes to how they find people to survey, where they live, how old they are, the series of questions it asks them, and how it takes those responses and broadens it out to form the bigger picture.
That is a *very* simplistic take, but there's a lot that goes into it to ensure it's accurate and reliable.
The ABS also includes its methodology with every release, which goes into a lot more detail about how they collect the data — and you can read the December iteration here on its website.
(And if you really want to nerd out, the ABS tracks every change made to how it collects the data over the years, on the off chance you find yourself in an economics trivia competition and need to do some light reading in preparation ...)
While some economic commentators think the RBA will keep rates on hold next month, the Commonwealth Bank is sticking by its prediction that rates will come down.
Gareth Aird, CBA's head of Australian economics, believes that the combination of today's employment data and the decline in wages growth "supports our view that the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is comfortably below the RBA's implied estimate of 4.5% and is likely to be around 4.0%".
"Australia should be able to run an unemployment rate of ~4.0% and see inflation within the target band sustainably," he wrote.
"But we don't know if the RBA shares our view (or is coming around to our view)."
However, he says that the Consumer Price Index for the December quarter (coming on January 29) will be the deciding factor for the central bank.
"A low Q4 24 trimmed mean CPI outcome, as we forecast, should see the RBA start to shift its thinking on the NAIRU," Mr Aird wrote.
"We stick with our call for a 25 basis point (0.25 percentage point) rate cut at the upcoming February Board meeting.
"We believe a trimmed mean outcome of 0.5%/qtr or below in Q4 24 would be sufficient for the RBA to start normalising the cash rate."
Speaking of interest rates, South Korea's central bank has left its cash rate on hold at 3% at its first meeting of the year.
The decision to leave rates unchanged wasn't widely expected by economists, either — just seven out of the 34 polled by Reuters correctly predicted it. (The majority were expecting a rate cut.)
But Gareth Leather, a senior Asia economist with Capital Economics, expects that the Bank of Korea won't leave rates on hold for too long:
"There are good reasons to expect the central bank to resume its easing cycle soon amid signs the political crisis is weighing on the economy," he wrote.
"But even if the crisis is resolved soon, GDP growth is expected to struggle as a combination of weak income growth, a downturn in the property sector and tight fiscal policy weigh on demand.
"We are forecasting below-consensus GDP growth of 1.5% this year.
"Meanwhile, inflationary pressures are under control. The headline rate came in at 1.9% y/y in December, and has now been below the BoK's 2.0% target for four consecutive months."
Long time, no speak Natty! It was less "missing" and more "end of year holiday" that was rounded out with a week of illness. (I'm all good now though, I promise!)
But to make up for my absence — and to try to distract myself from the absolutely horrendous 37 degrees in Brisbane right now — here's a gif that I think sums up where we'd all like to be.