Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news of a vampire in China.
But first, a big bounce in American consumer confidence is moving markets this morning and increasing risk appetites. The closely watched Conference Board index, which had decreased in February, jumped to 82.3 in March from 78.3 in the previous month.
Separately, the S&P/Case-Shiller composite index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas rose 0.8% in January on a seasonally adjusted basis. It followed a similar increase in December. Prices have risen 13.2% from a year ago. The house price gains, driven by a shortage of homes for sale, are bolstering household wealth and helping to support consumer spending. The number of sales however declined in February, in separate Commerce Dept data out overnight. That was a five month low.
In China, there is the story of a new type of bank run affecting the very largest of their state-owned banks. Because they are limited by law in what they can pay depositors, mobile apps from many of the bigger internet and mobile phone operators are sucking in huge amounts of these funds with their own higher-yielding offers. The banks have said its like a vampire draining funds. This type of challenge is a very real threat facing most traditional banks, everywhere.
There were no significant changes to oil or gold prices overnight, and the benchmark UST 10yr is still at 2.74%.
Soon, Fonterra will announce its interim results and we will have more on that separately.
The NZ Dollar is having a late rally in the afternoon New York session on the growing risk appetite and starts today at 85.8 USc, the Aussie is at 93.6 AUc and the TWI is up to 80.1.
If you want to catch up with all the changes yesterday, we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with today's event risk is by following our Economic Calendar here »
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1 Comments
How exactly does one store money on a mobile app?
Is this like bitcoin, where you actually store a unique byte pattern on the phone, and exchange it for real money as needed?
Or are people actually storing the money with the mobile phone operator and not on the mobile app at all? The mobile app being a mere interface for customer to pass instructions for their account to the operator?
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