What happened Thursday

Business / news

A review of things you need to know before you sign off on Thursday; many retail rate changes, overseas works rush in, Fisher dumps performance fees, swaps stay firm, NZD soft, & more

13th Apr 23, 3:59pm by David Chaston

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
In case you missed our update yesterday, ANZ has announced some broads rate increases for all home loan products, but only for those 2 years and shorter. Resimac raised their floating rate by +50 bps to 8.34%. Late today, Westpac has added +40 bps to their floating rate taking it to 8.39%. But while they matched ANZ to two years fixed, they have set all their longer rates at 5.99%.

TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
ANZ has announced rate rises for both term deposits and its Serious Saver at-call account. Rabobank went further, raising many key TD rates and taking their 4 month rate to 4.40% and their 9 month rate to 5.90%, both market-leading for those terms. Squirrel Money has raised its on-call savings rate to 5.00% pa, also market-leading. Heartland Bank raised its Direct Call rate by +50 bps to 4.60% and their 90 day Notice Saver to 5.50%. Westpac looks like it has matched ANZ on its bonus saver rates and key TD rates.

A GATE RUSH
Overseas worker arrivals are now running ahead of pre-Covid levels with more than 20,000 people arriving in New Zealand on work visas in March.

PERFORMANCE FEE FREE
Fisher Funds announced today that it is removing performance fees across all their KiwiSaver funds "and our Managed Funds multi asset portfolios", as of 1 July, 2023.

INFLATION EXPECTATIONS COOL IN AUSTRALIA
In Australia, the Melbourne Institute's inflation expectations survey shows it dipping from 5.0% in March to 4.6% in their April survey.

AUSSIE LABOUR MARKET STAYS STRONG
Australia added +53,000 new jobs in March, with full-time roles rising +72,000 and the number of part-time roles falling -19,000 in the month. Their jobless rate stayed unchanged at 3.5%. Their participation rate was also unchanged at 66.7%.

SWAP RATES STAY FIRM
Wholesale swap rates have probably risen again today. However, the real action in swap rates comes near the close. Our chart will record the final positions. The 90 day bank bill rate is up +1 bp at 5.53% and 28 bps above the OCR. The Australian 10 year bond yield is now at 3.30% and up another +5 bps from yesterday. The China 10 year bond rate is unchanged at 2.84%. And the NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now at 4.09%, and that is up another +2 bps from this time yesterday, and still above the the earlier RBNZ fix at 4.02% which is up another +1 bp. The UST 10 year yield is now at 3.41% and down -3 bps from this time yesterday, although that masks some volatility in between as bond markets assess the implications of the softening US CPI inflation.

EQUITIES GENERALLY LOWER
On Wall Street the S&P500 fell away after the CPI data release to be down -0.4% for the day. The NZX50 is down -0.3% in later trade here. The ASX200 is down -0.2% in mid afternoon trade. Tokyo has opened unchanged. But Hong Kong opened very weak but is down 'only' -0.4% in mid-morning trade. Shanghai has opened little-changed.

GOLD FIRM
In early Asian trade, gold is up +US$2 from this this time yesterday, now at US$2018/oz. It closed in New York earlier at US$2015/oz and in London at US$2008/oz.

NZD MARGINALLY SOFTER
The Kiwi dollar is littel-changed against the US dollar to just over 62.1 USc. Against the Aussie we are down -40 bps to 92.6 AUc. And against the euro we are down -40 bps at 56.5 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is now at 69.8 with a -10 bps fall from this time yesterday.

BITCOIN STILL ABOUT US$30K
The bitcoin price has changed very little on a net basis since this time yesterday, still at US$30,080. But volatility over the past 24 hours has been low at +/-1.3%.

Daily exchange rates

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Source: RBNZ

Source: CoinDesk

Daily swap rates

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Source: NZFMA

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

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25 Comments

by Kiwisaint | 13th Apr 23, 4:01pm 1681358504

Is there any obvious reason we don't have monthly CPI reporting in NZ?

by Squishy | 13th Apr 23, 4:36pm 1681360611

It's cost apparently. That said with an analyst could probably build an approximation just by scraping public sites for data. Most supermarkets, building suppliers, car dealers etc. make prices publicly available so you could have it in real-time.

by mfd | 13th Apr 23, 5:09pm 1681362589

These guys are attempting to do just that. 7.34% today apparently.

https://gdplive.net/

by JimboJones | 13th Apr 23, 6:22pm 1681366970

Very cool

by Nellbell | 14th Apr 23, 6:41am 1681411281

Gosh look at the optimal OCR.

by Mark L | 13th Apr 23, 4:08pm 1681358887

Fisher Funds expecting that there will be no 'performance' coming to get fees from ?

by RCD | 13th Apr 23, 4:44pm 1681361075

Fisher aggressive capital funds (edit: Growth Fund) haven't made any gains (only losses) for the last 12 months at least, mine is still underwater from 18 months ago, so making a big noise about this is just smoke and mirrors, they weren't getting any performance fee anyway. They still charge 1% per annum for the privilege of losing the money on your behalf.

They also gloss over that loss period by mainly advertising an annualised 5yr return, you have to dig much deeper to find the month to month losses more recently

by ACB | 13th Apr 23, 5:45pm 1681364739

One of the more expensive fund managers out there. Not sure how they got default kiwisaver status in the first round but clearly it made the shareholders very, very wealthy.

by LASSET | 13th Apr 23, 6:15pm 1681366517

For comparison, my Simplicity Growth Fund fees are 0.3%pa.

(Fisher Funds growth fee 1.02%pa + performance fees)

Simplicity Growth returns (after fees and before tax):

3mths: +6.48%

1yr: -3.28%

2yrs annualised: 0.24%

3yrs annualised: 8.91%

5yrs annualised 6.84% - (Fisher Funds Growth 5yr annualised return has been 6.6%)

by Solid_Granite | 13th Apr 23, 4:51pm 1681361513

I think you'd be wise to fix at these longer terms

by kiwichas | 13th Apr 23, 5:14pm 1681362896

The Māori Health Authority (Te Aka Whai Ora) is spending more than $1.15 million a month on contractors and consultants, newly released figures show.

Established on July 1 last year, the agency spent $9.2m on contractors and consultants in its first eight months. The Crown entity’s full Budget appropriation for the financial year is $535m, funding that includes the health services it commissions.*

A huge waste of money, ongoing, which will not help Maori as it does not address the causes of their poor health;smoking, unemployment poor housing, education and poverty, that amount of money could go a long way if applied properly

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/new-maori-health-authority-spending…

by EdwardD | 13th Apr 23, 5:36pm 1681364217

I'm sure those consultants and contractors will be designing some of those G.. awful, condescending, ads that have been appearing on tv recently.

by Matt_B | 13th Apr 23, 9:41pm 1681378891

$513,200 went to H2R Consulting. Co owned by Mongrel Mob member Harry Tam.

by Wrong John | 13th Apr 23, 6:05pm 1681365910

Most Maori don't realise how lucky they are. Sad really.

by JimboJones | 13th Apr 23, 6:25pm 1681367140

Wow! You don’t think they could have been luckier and kept all their land which is now worth an absolute fortune?

by lostinawoods | 13th Apr 23, 9:48pm 1681379287

Absolutely - look at eastern Papua New Guinea for an example. How lucky they are to have so much land.

by Rob Reid | 13th Apr 23, 10:42pm 1681382531

Stone Age Utopia.

by redcows1 | 14th Apr 23, 7:24am 1681413870

Wow, you mean the formerly to be independent country that Indonesia annexed and has set about destroying/invading for the last 40 years while "civilized countries like NZ sit and watch.

by Baywatch | 13th Apr 23, 6:33pm 1681367592

Yes they are over the moon..

On the eve of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, Māori were 97 per cent of the population but European settlers claimed to own 27 million hectares of New Zealand land, more than the total land mass of the country.

By 1862, 22 years after the treaty was signed, settlers had arrived in droves, meaning Māori were then only half the population and almost all of the South Island was Crown land. By the end of the century the Māori population would be less than 6 per cent.

by Pa1nter | 14th Apr 23, 5:05am 1681405547

Its a fun day when you realise "Great" Britain was only so because they used a brief technological advantage in firearms to hold a quarter of the world to ransom and steal all their stuff. Now in an age of parity, they're looking pretty aimless and sad.

But yeah let's all moan about the Murray's. They should relish in this empty materialistic existence that has been bestowed upon them. Every savage needs an iPad.

by Nzdan | 14th Apr 23, 7:13am 1681413220

Didn't a certain northern tribe (Ngāpuhi) also have a brief technological advantage with firearms?

by JimboJones | 13th Apr 23, 7:15pm 1681370158

I have a friend travelling in the UK who has been astonished by the heating bills. Average power/gas bill is 2500 quid a year, over $400 NZ a month! And that is after govt subsidies. Nice for NZ to actually be cheaper at something for once.

Edit: it’s quite a big subsidy too: From 1 April to 30 June, the Ofgem Energy Price Cap level is £3,280 (annual equivalent). This is what consumers would pay if the Energy Price Guarantee were not in place.

Where is Fossil Lover when you need him?

by Advisor | 13th Apr 23, 7:31pm 1681371104

Too bad the UK can’t get the fracking O&G out of the ground fast enough.

by Palmtree08 | 13th Apr 23, 11:28pm 1681385285

Another brief polluting hit of dinosaur juice huh? When are you people going to learn that party is over?

by Atarangi | 13th Apr 23, 8:54pm 1681376064

JJ - can they separate heating out from other electricity / gas cost? Just trying to work out if that is actually expensive or not.$400 a month doesn’t sound outrageous in a cold environment.