John McDuling

Founding Editor-in-Chief at Capital Brief

Founding EIC @capitalbrief Priors: @smh | @theage @financialreview @qz

Articles

Private credit crunch

2 days ago | capitalbrief.com | John McDuling

Skip to contentIt's often said that 'the stock market is not the economy'. But what about private markets? Regulators are trying to figure them out. Already a subscriber? Sign inChoose plan(Required)Let me know about offers and insider updates. or pay with credit cardLet me know about offers and insider updates. Your email address will be stored in accordance with ourprivacy policy.
TACO Friday

1 week ago | capitalbrief.com | John McDuling

"Wall Street rallies on tariff delay and confidence". That was the headline of our Standup newsletter on Wednesday morning, which I think neatly surmises the state of play right now in global markets.
Super bad

1 week ago | capitalbrief.com | John McDuling

An issue that barely featured during the federal election campaign and was announced more than two years ago is consuming almost all of the oxygen in its aftermath. The furore over Labor’s plans to tax unrealised capital gains in super funds with balances above $3 million is growing, but also seems at odds with the landslide victory and mandate it just won. Today, we published a deep dive on how the increasingly contentious policy came together by Jennifer Duke.
'Lazy complacency'

2 weeks ago | capitalbrief.com | John McDuling

Investment banker and nonprofit board director John Wylie is about as establishment as they come in corporate Australia. But this week he uttered the kinds of words you don’t often hear from members of the national business elite. As Jack Derwin reported, Wylie told an audience of institutional investors in Melbourne on Tuesday that Australian business must emerge from “a lazy complacency of collecting rent from comfortable oligopolies or digging holes in the ground to fill northbound ships”.
Flash mob

3 weeks ago | capitalbrief.com | John McDuling

Since at least the 1990s, Australian governments of all persuasions have talked up ambitions of developing Sydney into a regional financial services hub. It was always a fanciful dream, given the sheer distance between Australia and the booming financial centres of Asia, where the regulatory burden on the industry tends to be lower, and the incentives on offer are often far more generous. So the ambition has never been realised.
In gold we trust

1 month ago | capitalbrief.com | John McDuling

“This is the first time in my career that you have got a president who wants the price of gold to go higher,” Larry Jeddeloh, a nearly 50-year veteran of the markets, declared at the Macquarie Australia Conference on Thursday. “I’ve never seen that before.”Jeddeloh, the founder of Minneapolis-based macro strategy firm TIS Group, was one of the more intriguing figures to appear at the conference in Sydney.
Urban decay

1 month ago | capitalbrief.com | John McDuling

When the historians of the future look back on the 2025 election campaign, they may well agree that the defining moment took place more than 15,000 kilometres from Australian shores. Donald Trump’s sweeping 'Liberation Day' tariffs, unveiled in the White House Rose Garden just days after the election was called, sent global markets into a tailspin and hijacked the news cycle.
No confidence vote

1 month ago | capitalbrief.com | John McDuling

“We’re politically neutral, and belong to no tribe: We take no sides in partisan politics. And we will never tell our audience how to vote”. The above was listed as one of our core editorial values when we launched Capital Brief nearly two years ago, and our coverage of the 2025 election campaign has been guided by those principles. Consistent with that, we won’t be endorsing any party or candidate.
Debt and forget

1 month ago | capitalbrief.com | John McDuling

There was a time, not that long ago, when a warning from a ratings agency that Australia’s sovereign credit rating was at risk of a downgrade due to excessive government spending would have set off a political earthquake. Not so this week. Sure, S&P’s lament over the nation’s finances generated plenty of headlines, including in Capital Brief.
Final countdown

1 month ago | capitalbrief.com | John McDuling

It’s difficult to remember an Australian federal election campaign like this one, and there haven't been that many days over the past four weeks where the election has even led the news in Australia. Delayed by a cyclone, interrupted by the Easter and Anzac Day breaks, and paused for the recent passing of the Pope, it has been a stop-start affair, punctuated by unforeseen events.