Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news of mixed trade and policy updates.
After months of stagnant activity, American 'pending home sales' rose in March, marking the first gain in the past nine months. Pending sales are like our REINZ 'unconditional' contracts, although they haven't legally transferred yet (which is when QV measures transactions). The actual March gain was 3.4% whereas markets were expecting a 1% gain. It's a spring bounce.
The Federal Reserve's latest review meeting is about to start and we will hear of decisions on Thursday. The focus there is on US labour market progress and now attention is shifting to the US participation rate as the key metric the Fed will use to change policy settings. The next update on that will be at the weekend with the release of US non-farm payrolls.
Across the Atlantic, ECB President Draghi told German lawmakers overnight that a quantitative-easing program in Europe isn’t imminent and is relatively unlikely for now, according to a euro-area official present at the meeting.
South Korea has been in the news recently with a terrible tragedy, but the country is actually gaining prosperity. It saw exports grow and its overall economic growth beat forecasts in the March quarter at +3.9%. South Korea has a higher per capita GDP than New Zealand.
The price of iron ore in China is under threat from their changing financing rules. From May 1, letter of credit purchases will apparently require a substantially larger 'deposit'. That will make the cost of trading in the commodity more expensive.
In other commodity news, gold has slipped below US$1,300/oz again. The oil price is unchanged. Equities are lower in mid-afternoon trading and the benchmark UST 10 yr bond yield is up at 2.70%, a gain of 3 bps.
Today we get the New Zealand March trade balance data and a big gain is expected. February saw a trade surplus of $818 million and markets are expecting the March surplus to grow to $1.2 billion. We'll see. An unexpected result could well affect the currency today.
We start today with the NZ dollar lower again against the US dollar at just under 85.3 USc, also down against the Aussie at 92.3 AUc and the TWI starts at 79.4.
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 »
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.