Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today (or if you already work from home, before you shutdown your laptop).
MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
SBS Bank has raised its floating mortgage rate by +50 bps to 6.79%, with the change for existing clients effective on September 5, 2022. A summary of all changes is here.
TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
Heretaunga Building Society raised all their TD rates. SBS Bank has raised their key savings account rates too.
FATTER MARGINS
The RBNZ has reported (S20) that the banking industry's net interest margin (NIM) jumped from 2.05% in March to 2.17% in June, its biggest quarterly rise since 2011. More detail on which banks benefited from this rising margin will be released tomorrow next week when their Dashboard data is released.
INVESTOR DEMAND VANISHING
Apart from Januaries (and the pandemic affected April 2020) new lending to investors in residential housing (C32) was the lowest in July for any other month since the RBNZ started reporting this data in August 2014. More here.
END OF THE HOUSING SHORTAGE?
Kiwibank economists now see house prices falling -13% by the end of the year followed by a 'slow' recovery. They also see the housing shortage 'disappear' over the next 12 months.
METAVERSE FOR INVESTORS
For investors, we see BetaShares launched the Metaverse ETF on the ASX this month. The market opportunity for ‘bringing the Metaverse to life’ has been estimated at nearly US$800 bln in annual revenue by 2024 according to Bloomberg. Variations on these new funds have RIPPL Reports in our Investment Funds resource.
NUCLEAR POWER RETURNS?
Trapped in current imports of oil and gas, Japan is set to order new nuclear power plant construction to shore up some energy security.
SWAP RATES HIGHER YET AGAIN
Wholesale swap rates are probably higher again today, still on those global influences we noted yesterday. There is curve steepening still going on. The 90 day bank bill rate is up +1 bp at 3.39%. The Australian 10 year bond yield is now at 3.65% and up another +4 bps since this time yesterday. The China 10 year bond rate is at 2.65% and little-changed and still near its lowest since May 2020. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now at 3.85% and up another +5 bps from this time yesterday, and now lower than the earlier RBNZ fix for this bond which was up +7 bps to 3.87%. The UST 10 year is now at 3.04% and up +2 bps from this time yesterday.
EQUITIES FLAT
On Wall Street, the S&P500 fell -0.2% today unable to get any traction. Tokyo is down -0.5% in Wednesday trade so far. Hong Kong is down another -0.9% and Shanghai is down -0.7% in early trade today. The ASX200 is up +0.7%, and the NZX50 is flat in late trade.
GOLD FIRMS
In early Asian trade, gold risen +US$9 to US$1,746/oz.
NZD ON HOLD
The Kiwi dollar is unchanged from this time yesterday, still at 61.9 USc. Against the AUD we are also unchanged at 89.8 AUc. Against the euro we are little-changed at 62.2 euro cents. That means our TWI-5 is now at 71 and also little-changed.
BITCOIN UNCHANGED
Bitcoin is virtually unchanged from this time yesterday at US$21,310. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest at just on +/- 1.8%.
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29 Comments
Julian Robertson passed away, one of the OG hedge fund titans and responsible for almost certainly the single largest philanthropic gift in our history.
Met him once in Boston when he ran Tiger Management decades ago.
We all remember his billion dollar sueing of a newspaper. Businessweek, I think. They won.
I have seen his Picasso in one of his lodges, hanging on the wall. More of an investment than anything else, I suspect. I didn't see a lot of artistic merit in it.
I think we can all agree you don't become a hedge fund billionaire by being a "nice" guy. Personally, I quite like Picasso.
Why not Te Kooti?
Nice guys finish last - but the bad boys always get the girl
I’ve noticed the bad boys from school seem to look pretty fat/bald by about 40, the nerdy ones tend to have money and look after themselves, the tides turn eventually.
Not the girls worth having.
Unfortunate. Conicidentally, it has been a rough 12 months for Tiger.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiger-global-s-hedge-fund-lost-52-for-the-…
The Treasury has today announced that NZ$2.5 billion of 20 September 2035 inflation-indexed New Zealand Government Bonds have been issued via syndicated tap. Concurrent to the tap, NZ$1.5 billion of 20 September 2025 inflation-indexed New Zealand Government Bonds have been repurchased.
The 2035 inflation-indexed bonds, which carry a coupon of 2.50%, was issued at a spread of 57 basis points over the 20 September 2030 inflation-indexed bond, at a yield to maturity of 2.19%. Total book size, at final price guidance, exceeded NZ$3.5 billion.
The 2025 inflation-indexed bonds, which carry a coupon of 2.00%, was repurchased at a spread of 126 basis points under the 20 September 2030 inflation-indexed bond, at a yield to maturity of 0.36%.
Settlement for both the tap, and repurchase, will occur on 31 August 2022. There will be no further issuance of the 20 September 2035 inflation-indexed bond prior to November 2022. Link
RBNZ report on bank profits. How could their margins possibly be a record quarter since 2011? After their latest record profits, mostly sent straight back to Aussie to be put with their Kiwi wage subsidy payments. What a bloody cheek. Please at least change to a Kiwi owned bank so the money sloshes around in our pool instead of a foreign pool.
A little bit of tax-payer assistance in there via the FLP to keep the NIM healthy Sit. [ Personal insults removed. Don't do it. It is unnecessary to make a valid point. Ed ]
Sounds like our banks are acting more and more cartel like given they are all having record quarters. Don't worry, the Comcom will bring them into line /sarc
Have a steel based manufacturing business, some of the steel sizes have nearly doubled in price in the last 12 months, Steel & Tube profit nearly doubled on an increase of steel sales tonnage of only 5.7%.......the phrase ripped off comes to mind.
So it's not only the banking sector who have increased margins.
$m / FY22 / FY21 (*2) / Variance %
Revenue / $599.1 / $481.0 / 24.6%
Volume (Ktonnes) / 167 / 158 / 5.7%
EBITDA / $66.6 / $38.6 / 72.5%
Normalised EBITDA (*3) / $66.9 / $37.6 / 77.9%
EBIT / $47.6 / $20.7 / 130.0%
Normalised EBIT (*3) / $47.9 / $19.7 / $143.1%
NPAT / $30.2 / $15.4 / 96.4%
EPS / 18.3 cps / 9.3 cps / 96.8%
Dividend / 13.0 cps / 4.5 cps / 188.9%
Factually incorrect.
1. No bank took the wage subsidy.
2. The RBNZ stopped them making any dividend repatriation during the pandemic. Since, they have had to retail earnings to meet the bolstered RBNZ capital requirements.
No bank took the wage subsidy.
I think what they probably mean is that people's wage subsidies ended up as bank deposits (although whether that's true or not I have no idea).
Nike's NFT revenue has hit $185M, $92.21M in just royalties.
The company’s NFT collection has made $93 million in primary sales volume and $92 million in secondary sales to date.
So an acquisition has possibly helped establish Nike as a household web3 brand by partnering with forward thinkers and innovators.
https://tokenist.com/nikes-nft-revenue-hits-185m-92-21m-in-just-royalti…
No one on this site understands what a NFT is?
We understand.
Don't understand who in their right mind would buy them though.
Care to explain what a NFT is then ...we are holding our breath in anticipation.
I would need to make up an awful lot of words to explain it in Te Reo.
80% of the English language is borrowed from other languages.
It's an image format.
People have explained NFTs to me in the past, makes me understand how my parents feel when I explain bitcoin to them.
I simply can't wait to splash out on a pair of digital Air Force 1s.
The boom is over for Australia’s leading property market with Brisbane suburbs that were in the grip of FOMO madness just eight months ago, now seeing home values drop by as much as 41 per cent in three months while Greater Brisbane has recorded two consecutive months of negative price growth. The heat has also come out of the auction market with Brisbane auction clearance rates as low as 33 per cent this month after regularly tracking above 70 and 80 per cent during the boom. Greater Brisbane has seen 97 suburbs record negative house price growth over the three months to the end of July, according to property data analyst, PropTrack.(Chelmer (-41.2 per cent) to $1.7m Holland Park West (-27.6 per cent) to $1,187,500 Karana Downs (-25.6 per cent) to $702,500 Manly (-23.4 per cent) to 1.225m....)
Sounds familiar.
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