A review of things you need to know before you sign off on Thursday; no retail rate changes, Barfoots sees rising sales, fewer building consents issued, weak spending, swaps little-changed, NZD up, & more

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/LOAN RATE CHANGES
No changes today.

TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
Nothing to report here either. But you should note that we have made a small update to our savings page tables, bundling all the fund manager at-call account offerings together for easy comparison. See here or here.

UP, BUT CAN IT BE SUSTAINED?
Dominant Auckland realtor Barfoot & Thompson said average sales prices rose +$111,345 in March to $1.227 mln. But they also noted that rising stock levels becoming a worry.

FALLING AWAY
Data out from Stats NZ for February 2024 shows that fewer new dwellings were consented in the month than in each of the previous five February months. The biggest drop was in consents for retirement units. Overall, we are back to 2018 levels again.

NO 'REAL' RISE
Infometrics is noting that non-residential consents issued in February were up 3.5% from a year ago to $864 mln, representing a small decline in the volume of consents once building cost inflation is taken into account.

CONFRONTING HIGH CONSTRUCTION COSTS
The Government said it will automatically recognise overseas building products standards to allow a wider range of residential building materials to be used in locally.

COMMODITY PRICES HOVER
The ANZ World Commodity Price Index fell -1.3% in March from February as dairy and forestry prices fell. In NZD terms, the index fell -0.4% on that same basis as the NZD lost -0.8% against the Trade Weighted Index. Year on year, commodity prices are up only +0.% in world price terms, but up +3.1% in NZD terms

CUSTOMERS STAY VERY SHORT
Customer deposits at banks have taken their usual season hesitation in February and are now +3.5% higher than a year ago. This is similar to the same modest growth that set in in late 2022. The maturity profile of these deposits are little-change; almost 58% is at call or matures within one month, almost 39% matures in less than a year, and a minor 3.5% is longer.

CROWN ACCOUNTS START TO SHOW SOFTER RISE IN TAX TAKE
The Crown Accounts for the eight months to February 2024 reveal that both income tax receipts, and GST tax receipts have both essentially stopped growing, an indication of the constraints biting the overall economy.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT
Worldline (ex-Paymark) says weak spending growth amongst Core Retail merchants in their payments network in March suggests Kiwi consumers are still grappling with tight budgets, although they did spend more over Easter this year than last year. “Comparing Easter 2024 versus Easter 2023, spending over the five days was up +2.5%, largely due to the +6.4% jump on Easter Thursday. This also made it the fifth highest spending day of the last 12 months, only behind the few shopping days before Christmas Day,” they noted.

SUNCORP RESOLVES ITS LIFE BOOK
Suncorp has offloaded is local life insurance arm Asteron Life to Resolution Life, for NZ$410 mln. This will add to the growing thousands who end up as Resolution Life 'customers' after many other life insurers take the same route. (Resolution Life is an international giant that never develops new business; it is in the business of buying life insurance customer books from others and running those down through their natural life. They started here buying AMP Life, then a similar portfolio of AIA policies.)

NOT SO RESTRAINED?
In Australia, households there seem to be loosening their budget purse-strings with February spending rising by more than it has since September 2023.

SWAP RATES SLIGHTLY FIRMER
Wholesale swap rates are likely to be modestly higher again today on global influences. Our chart below records the final positions. The 90 day bank bill rate is unchanged at 5.63%. The Australian 10 year bond yield is up +2 bps at 4.16%. The China 10 year bond rate is unchanged at 2.30%. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is down -4 bps from this time yesterday at 4.71% and the earlier RBNZ fix was at 4.66% and down -0.3 bps. The UST 10yr yield is up +1 bp from this time yesterday at 4.36%. Their 2yr is down -2 bps at 4.67%, so the curve is now inverted less, now by -31 bps.

EQUITIES SHOW WIDELY DIFFERENT RESULTS
In late trade today, the NZX50 is down another -0.3% but the ASX200 is up +0.5% in early afternoon trade. Tokyo has opened its Thursday session up a very strong +1.9%. Both Hong Kong and Shanghai are closed for a public holiday. Singapore is up +0.6%. Earlier Wall Street closed little-changed with the S&P500 up a mere +0.1%.

OIL PRICES RISE AGAIN
Oil prices are up +50 USc to just over US$85/bbl while the international Brent price is now just over US$89/bbl. These levels are new five month highs.

GOLD HITS ANOTHER ATH
In early Asian trade, gold is up +US$19 from this time yesterday to a new all-time high of US$2301/oz.

NZD RECOVERS
The Kiwi dollar has risen +60 bps against the greenback, now at 60.2 USc. But against the Aussie we are unchanged at 91.5 AUc. Against the euro we a little firmer at 55.5 euro cents. This all means the TWI-5 is up +40 bps to 69.2.

BITCOIN LITTLE-CHANGED
The bitcoin price has eased up slightly today to US$66,099 and up +0.7% from this time yesterday. Volatility of the past 24 hours has been modest at +/- 1.1%.

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

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