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
ICBC raised its fixed rates for terms 6 months to 18 months. It cut fixed rates for terms for terms 3 to 5 years. HSBC has raised its floating rate by +40 bps to 8.34%. (It had announced this change a few weeks ago, but it is effective today for existing borrowers.)
TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
WBS has raised TD rates for 3 months and 6 months, taking their six month rate to 5.30%. Christian Savings raised rates too.
SUDDEN STOP
The service sector turned sharply negative in April. In On a seasonally adjusted basis it was modestly positive at 53.8, but in April it is marginally contracting at 49.8. (under 50 is contraction.) But on a raw score (actual) basis the shift was from 53.5 in March to 46.8 in April. That is a notable contraction and the most since February 2022. We've gone from 'looking good' to 'not looking good' according to the BNZ analysts. The worst is that 'activity' and 'new orders' are now the weakest elements. Almost all of this weakness is accounted for in the north half of the North Island (including Auckland). Repeated flooding doesn't help. Hospo is being hit hard.
AUCKLAND PEAK
The number of new homes being completed in Auckland is at a record high - but it is a level that probably won't last.
PPI RISE SLOWS IN JAPAN
Producer prices in Japan rose 5.8% in April from a year ago, a slower pace of increase that the 7.4% rate in March, The March to April rate ran at just a 2.0% pa rate. In fact there has hardly been any rise (or fall) since December.
A DEPRECIATED INCUMBENT
In Turkey, the election result is disputed with the incumbent Erdogan attempting to cling on. That is hurting its currency with the Turkish lira now at almost 20 to the USD. When Erdogan came to power as President in 2014 it was 2 to the USD. (You currently need 12.2 lira for a NZD. In 2014 it was 1.8.)
GERMANS VOTING TOO
There was also a regional election in Germany, in the Bremen state. It isn't a crucial poll, but the Social Democrats won well. (The center-left SDP governs federally.) The conservative CDU slipped, and both the Greens and FDP got hit hard in that state.
DETAIL LOOKS EVEN WORSE FOR PwC
In Australia, their Senate inquiry into PwC's tax breach will probably start on June 7. But it has come to light that the firm targeted 23 US tech firms including Apple, Google and Microsoft with a tax avoidance workaround hours after treasurer Joe Hockey announced a new law in 2015. Fourteen of those firms took up the plan although it is unlikely any knew the advice was based on illegally-sourced information. ASIC is probing PwC's behaviour too.
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SWAP RATES A BIT FIRMER
Wholesale swap rates are probably a little higher today on international influences. 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 down -2 bps at 5.58% and 33 bps above the OCR. The Australian 10 year bond yield is now at 3.41% and up +2 bps from this morning. The China 10 year bond rate is unchanged at 2.73%. And the NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now at 4.10% which is up +4 bps, and back above the earlier RBNZ fix at 4.05% which down -3 bps from Friday. The UST 10 year yield is now at 3.46% and unchanged from where we opened this morning.
EQUITIES MIXED & MUTED
The NZX50 dropped -0.4% at its open and hasn't recovered from there. The ASX200 has recovered from its opening drop to be down just -0.1% in afternoon trade. Tokyo is starting its week up +0.4% and adding to the run up that started Wednesday. Hong Kong has opened up +0.3%. Shanghai has opened down -0.6% and the worst of the markets we follow. The S&P500 futures currently suggest Wall Street will open tomorrow little-changed from its Friday close.
GOLD FIRM
In early Asian trade, gold is up at US$2018/oz and up +US$7 from where we opened this morning.
NZD HOLDS LOWER
The Kiwi dollar is little-changed from this morning at 62 USc. Against the Aussie we are stll down at 93.1 AUc. And against the euro we are still down at 57.1 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is holding at 70.2, very similar to where we opened this morning.
BITCOIN RECOVERS
The bitcoin price is up today, now at US$27,264 and up +1.2% from where we opened this morning. Almost all the gain is from 1pm so it may not last. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest at just under +/- 1.1%.
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68 Comments
Watch out for scams!
While it’s unfortunate and regrettable REA-Carla lost $100K to an elaborate scam involving a too good to be true offer of 7.1% for 12-months, it’s also worth noting a current aversion to property as a viable investment – her bread and butter. Speaks volumes.
This is dreadful and my sympathies lie with the victim. However a few things here:
- I'm not sure why the victim didn't visit the the Citibank office in Auckland for a face to face meeting. Considering it was her life savings.
- If you take a look at the internet portal, the first thing that stands out are the Citibank logos. These are so poorly copied that they're not even the same dimensions and design on the same internet page. Perhaps I'm just sensitive to these things.
It is a powerful lesson however on not putting all of your eggs in one basket.
She says this is her entire savings - and yet she invested the whole lot, at one go, in one investment. This breaks all of the common sense laws of investing money wisely.
Anyone who wants to learn from this (which is hopefully everyone):
1. Don't invest your entire life savings all at once into one investment.
2. Dollar cost average into investments to reduce risk (read this if this concept is new to you Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) Explained With Examples and Considerations (investopedia.com))
3. Diversify your investments across as many things as you can to reduce risk!
10 varied investments of $10,000 (across term deposits, cash funds, bond funds, some low risk shares) would have been a much better way to manage this money. If might have meant she lost 10% of her money, as opposed to the whole lot.
Yip - if the wheels start falling off and the banks are looking dodgy I might move some $$ to Kiwibonds.
1 year at 5% while you wait to see who gets bailed out and in what manner while an OBR plays out isn't a bad option.
Have suggested this to a few people as a good option if things really do turn south later this year.
1% less than the retail bank term deposit rate but as close to risk free as you get in NZ. Not a bad option really if times are getting bumpy.
This is also true so agree JC - but as Warren Buffett says/warns:
'Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those that know what they are doing'.
On the Ethereum topic, I've also read about people who mortgaged the house at the opposite side of the trade and lost everything - so perhaps this is more about chance than skill/knowledge. An argument could be made in either case I'm sure.
Yes recall covering this in finance major papers at uni but details a little hazy now. Think it was around 15-20 different investments was optimum to remove investor error - after that the benefit of diversification really limits itself. You just then have systemic risk to deal with - which seems to be something that most people completely ignore (for whatever reason).
70 years ago there was a lot of research done on this, and the conclusion was the following: the only proven successful traders were in the firms providing the liquidity - i.e., those who had insider knowledge of the buy/sell orders. The vast majority don't even break even. The stats (as of 2019) were something like 80% of traders lose money per year - but there is a very large pool of traders, so the industry feeds itself by advertising those few who have been in the 1/5 for a consecutive number of years - even 14 years straight and it could still be just luck (5^14 < the number of people alive) - in order to attract new victims to strip.
Buffet works hard to get that knowledge, if I've read him correctly. Know your business. Know their clients, their competitors. See if they have a point of difference. See what adds value.
Channel 7 did a doco on it last night.
It's run by a pom who employs poms in KL.
They got busted by Malaysian special police.
https://tvtonight.com.au/2023/05/7news-spotlight-may-14.html
They were netting 4 miliion a week . One aussie lost 12 million
"Can't lose with 'bricks and mortar' - anyone who suggests otherwise is 'redonkulous' "
Quote dated May 2023 while New Zealand approached a recession with housing stock worth 5x GDP and the worlds reserve currency money supply contracting for the first time since the great depression.
I was looking at kiwi vs us dollar in 1990s yesterday out of interest since it feels similar (to this lay person) and recalling cost of very imports I was involved with at the time.
I forgot we got down to 40 cents. Tough to keep inflation in check if that plays out again.
If you bought a house you have an asset that you're either living in or renting out... the value is irrelevant until you go and sell - most don't sell within a year...
Paper gains were irrelevant for interest commentors over 2020/2021 so you'd think paper loses should be the same, right?
When you buy a house you have to go through qualified RE agent, qualified broker/banker, qualified solicitor... it's quite a process to ensure you know what you're doing.
I don't know how it's the same as someone pretending to be working at a bank, stealing your cash that you'll never see again...
To say it's facts they're the same concept is...ridiculous
And thanks, I always enjoy a counter argument with a spelling lesson - every day's a school day.
If you mark to market the opportunity costs of buying vs not buying - it is quite possible she would be more than $100K worse of now because she would have purchased at the peak of the market - and have to service much more debt (interest payments on hundreds of thousands more lost at the bank - money she will never see again) over the life of the loan for the same asset.
Some cash flows (both present - such as cash you hold) you know have been 'stolen' if you experience fraud like this because they are immediately 'gone' - others disappear to the bank as interest payments in the future - or whoever you are indebted to for the purchase of that asset. That is future cash that you would have had, but now you don't because the bank now has a claim to that cash flow, not you, because you paid too much for the asset. This is part of interest rate risk and becomes very dangerous on highly leveraged transactions.
So this isn't a completely black and white scenario - but it can be if you don't want to consider the future cash flows that will be 'stolen' from you for overpaying for an asset. As I say, there's a reasonable chance that not buying a house 6 months or a year ago and investing they way she did but losing her funds - might actually have a silver lining - she just doesn't know it yet.
To say this is completely 'ridiculous' would mean that you know exactly (with 100% certainty) what is going to happen in the future with regards to asset prices and cash flows - I don't - do you? So is the proposition really that ridiculous or is this just jumping to conclusions in the present, without considering how the associated cash flows of these assets will play out over the next 30 years?
If you haven't spent much time discounting future cash flows (such as bond and share pricing at various costs of capital/discount rates) this could go completely over your head.
For your typical home owner it does - they don't appear to understand the future cash flows they are signing up for and the interest rate risk that is present if they over pay for an asset and the cost of capital/discount rate might rise of the course of the loan - such as what is currently playing out in our housing market.
The reason prices are falling is because banks are now making a bigger claim to peoples future cash flows for the assets they purchased the last few years - more than what the buyer was anticipating they were going to pay when they made the initial contract. And because you risk paying more cash flows in the future to somebody else than you anticipated, this makes the future self poorer than the self who initially purchased the asset. The opportunity cost of those additional cash flows you could have directed elsewhere (into other better investments) over a 30 year period of a loan can be huge...hundreds of thousands of dollars.
View investments as a series of cash flows over a long period of time and situations can look very different to what they appear in the present moment - but not many people do that (they just look at the current price of something - and not the future cash flows AND possible discount rates associated to it).
If you bought a house you have an asset that you're either living in or renting out... the value is irrelevant until you go and sell - most don't sell within a year...
Dumb and dumber , you guys talk about investment but dumb dumb dumb.
You are in the game to make money as an investor, shit do you guys not add oil to your car until the light is flashing?
most do not sell in a year, well we all know that average days to sell number is complete bullshite.....
https://www.oneroof.co.nz/news/the-get-rich-quick-myth-how-property-inv…
no trust the numbers
If she purchased an Auckland house 12-18 months ago she might have lost $200K!
So by getting scammed on the TD, she might be $100K up when you compare the various opportunity costs, marked to market. We don't know yet....time will tell of course.
Does this also need deleted Nifty - or are we open to the concepts of free speech, decorum and consideration of issues from all perspectives, and not just that 'you can't lose with property'?
December 2017 - RBNZ warning to FHB's, it's not our job to protect you;
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/99408539/reserve-bank-warns-its-not-ou…
No the RBNZ told the banks and public to expect negative rates. They're now saving that one for later
At one stage you were saying, with low mortgage rates the boom could not repeat. Hey presto the RB has given the public another one or two cycles of faling OCR
Btw this is an incredible recession/not recession when int rates are going up.
No the RBNZ told the banks to prepare to have the capacity to work with negative rates - not to expect them. This was a contingency, not a certainty.
There is a big difference that you should be able to see the difference between.
"Btw this is an incredible recession/not recession when int rates are going up"
Are you being serious with this comment? Have you been watching the various yield curves around the world and what these are indicating - and their accuracy/reliability in predicting recessions?
Dancing on the head of a pin again. The RBNZ made the banks update the computer systems to be able to handle negative rates, perhaps that means charging depositors for holding their cash.
You may be right that we are in recession or possibly we are out of recession or alternatively there hasn't been one. We won't know the answer to that for another month
OTY old boy
In Australia, their Senate inquiry into PwC's tax breach will probably start on June 7. But it has come to light that the firm targeted 23 US tech firms including Apple, Google and Microsoft with a tax avoidance workaround hours after treasurer Joe Hockey announced a new law in 2015. Fourteen of those firms took up the plan although it is unlikely any knew the advice was based on illegally-sourced information. ASIC is probing PwC's behaviour too.
Don't hold your breath. Nothing will fundamentally change. The Game of Mates is one of the biggest rorts globally.
It's A BIG Club & You Ain't In It!
In the contentious world of crypto, Binance has pulled out of Canada. However, Binance is now opening in Japan in June through an acquisition of a local exchange. In terms of regulation, Japan is the most rigorous and most difficult market to enter. Binance has previously been rejected and FTX Japan customers got all their funds back. Forbes has done an expose on Japan and crypto regulation.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/2023/05/08/what-japan-could…
An article on RNZ names USA as one of our main competitors for international students. Maybe in the same universe where McDonald's competes for Burger Wellington.
The quality of MSM reporting in this country is slipping fast.
Foreign students returning to NZ faster than pre-pandemic | RNZ
MSM reporting quality will continue to slip, especially online, because the monetisation method of choice (shoving banner ads in your face that are dynamically served via a convoluted series of middleman ad networks) tends to require ever-greater click volume over time to compensate for declining CPMs - the rate the publisher/website earns for shoving said banner ads in your face.
Considering that most people have the attention span of a goldfish (reference the rise of TikTok, where I believe that 7 seconds is about the average max engagement time) the average punter wants titillation, something to be outraged about, or easy-to-consume pop news that can be downed faster than a tradie can down a can of blue V and a petrol station pie.
Quality audiences that can command higher CPMs for publishers tend to congregate on niche platforms, or are willing to pay for industry/topic-specific paywalled content, meaning that the likes of Stuff, NZ Herald etc have to spray more shite in the hope that some of it sticks with the digital hoi polloi.
Regarding new builds in AKL .....I know what I would be doing now .....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MneA9pgLVw
...and at 6% why wouldn't ya ....or are you waiting for that magical "capital gain" beanstalk to grow in your back garden again ???
keewees still believing in the tooth fairy ...
If an immigrant could afford to buy a property in the AKL, you can be sure NZ will NOT be first on their list for migration ....it's always the good 'ol USA , then maybe the UKaay, Canadia or aussie .....THEN that little place to the east of aussie.....
ya can only put those rents up so far peeps !
anyway way more important things to be concerned with ....anyone heard of a debt ceiling or inverted yield curves ...my fave is the 3 month 10 year ...that baby is a dozee !
The S will HTF when everyone thinks those yield curves revert back to normal ....... but dat is when the fun starts !!!
Yee Haaaah say the "Crazy Horse" !!!
Yip yield curves are showing that recession could be inbound - months away (and this is usually when the biggest falls occur in asset prices).
'According to the Cleveland Fed's Yield Curve model, the probability of a recession by April of 2024 is 75.54%'
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FvzmwuoXgAEFKmI?format=jpg&name=medium
And:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FvYkFlIaUAAdFj7?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
Astounding read from Matt Barrie in Aussie (if you don't know - entrepreneur, Chief Executive of Freelancer.com, Escrow.com, Executive Chairman of Freightlancer.com (ASX:FLN).
"Australia... has instead turned into a ponzi dependent on mass migration in order to buy houses, consume things and make us coffee. The ponzi is in its late and final stage and like all ponzis, unsustainable."
A rant and a half.
https://medium.com/@matt_11659/the-great-australian-scream-dbc4095af1a0
Its amazing how triggered the real estate Spruikers get if someone questions the everlasting fountain of capital gains tax free cash...... I see nothing but pain for years to come, no one on here could tell me how to buy a townhouse and make money, instead they suggest buying land and hoping i could subdivide after an unelected gov gets in and magically removes cap gains tax/brightline..... sounds like you need to gamble your money and have a lot of luck... this randomness is not something I have ever faced in all the houses I have bought that have doubled, they where all cash flow positive.... I think the plot is well lost..... what will May bring re medium prices?
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