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%.
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43 Comments
I see the British Post Office Horizon Scandal Inquiry now seems to have a link to New Zealand. Former British Post Office Group Council – the top PO lawyer - Chris Aujard is now based in New Zealand and is to give evidence to the Horizon inquiry in April.
It is reported by ITV News that “A secret recording obtained by ITV News claims that Mr Aujard, the then Post Office’s most senior lawyer, was warned by independent investigators in 2013 that the Post Office may have misled the courts and pressured sub-postmasters into “wrongful and unsafe” guilty pleas", (see following link). It is claimed that the recording was of a meeting held between the Post Office’s former General Counsel Chris Aujard and Second Sight forensic accountants Ian Henderson and Ron Warmington in December 2013. Despite this apparent warning of unsound prosecutions and plea deals, in the recording he seems to personally side step any responsibility, and despite his senior role, the unsound prosecutions and plea deals by the Post Office continued. He left the Post Office in 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TIc2_9rgbo
Chris Aujard joined FNZ in August 2018 as Group General Counsel (GC). FNZ is a global financial services company that provides investment platforms to major financial institutions and wealth management firms. The FNZ web page states that he is responsible for overseeing all legal and corporate governance matters across the group. FNZ web page states “Chris held a number of senior GC positions at . . . . a major UK institution, where, in addition to running the legal function, he had responsibility for the internal audit, risk, compliance and security functions.” Does one read “British Post Office” for “major UK institution”?
https://www.fnz.com/person/chris-aujard
Mr Aujard’s participation in the Inquiry and the outcomes will be interesting.
I'm aware of the UK PO scandal. The amount of innocent people who lost homes and had their lives destroyed by the courts is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. 200 were jailed and many left destitute, even suicides.
If this gronk is living in NZ then we need to deport the PoS now.
average sales prices rose +$111,345 in March to $1.227 mln
10% a month, The RBNZ is going to lose there lunch over that rate of increase.... lets assume it occurs for the rest of the year., compounding .. Average House Prices will be $3.5 mil by March 2024.
Is this a record, have we ever seen a 10% increase in Barfoot average price in a month before????
Better be quick.... or not.
Aren't house prices excluded from inflation?
If people spend more on houses and thus have less to spend on everything else.. then inflation falls and rbnz meets their target? If correct then in an inflationary market it's in rbnz interest for house prices to rise?
So, no tax increase from the huge bump in population over recent months; negative on per capita basis.
All those people arriving need roads to drive on to get to work, water to do their daily chores, clinics/hospitals to visit when sick, schools to send their kids to - we need plenty of tax dollars to build, maintain and run all of those assets plus a massive backlog worth 100B+ to fix.
Too late for the govt to divert a few billion from payroll costs towards frontline services (the proverbial horse). North Shore Hospital ED overflow forces patients to wait in corridors, double-bunk (msn.com)
It is crazy TBH. Essentially it results in a lower standard of living. They were very quick to remove the restrictions and standards on the qualifications of people coming into NZ when it suits them. But when the inflow increases signficantly, they don't slow down the tap. They aren't able to pivot, NZ is like the Titanic, where you can see the iceberg but can't change direction in time. .
Without the immigrants there wouldn't be sufficient renters to keep houses occupied and landlords wealthy. Whi cares if they claim accom supplement to do so
Also.. without immigrants gdp would fall further, lazy farm owners would have a lack of cheap staff and need to do something to increase productivity.
The elite don't care about infrastructure and public services and so on... they don't drive in rush hour or use public hwath services (they have private cover. )lol
I heard one commentator say it was cheaper to bring in the cheap labour, than invest in technology and machinary to do the work. But it is false economy IMO in the long run. Just makes the numbers look good in the short-term. But then we will have crisis upon crisis due to investment not matching population growth.
Amazon is shutting down it's checkout-less, grab and go food stores, run by the incredible power of AI detecting what shoppers were putting in their baskets.
Turns out there were 1000 Indian workers on low pay doing much of the checking out remotely. Cheaper and more accurate than an AI.
In short, with an abundance of cheap labour globally, it can make it very hard to replace humans with viable technology alternatives.
You mean 2000?
There's always been a lot of people, it's just that now education is more universal, and geography is less of a factor in accessing the labour.
It's cheaper to grow fruit in Sth America, send it to Thailand to process and package it, then ship it here than it is to do that within NZ.
In early Asian trade, gold is up +US$19 from this time yesterday to a new all-time high of US$2301
Oh wow. We got to $2,300 today. Was expecting the price to be manipulated downwards overnight.
Silver price very frisky as well. Now up 19% in a month (Kiwi pesos).
And over 5 years, +102%. Charts looking sexy.
Despite the new Government’s widely broadcast cost-cutting intentions, and possibly because of them, full-time equivalent staff increased by 4.1 per cent, and reached an all-time high of 65,699 full-time equivalent positions (FTEs) across the public service in the six months to December 31
From the Herald today. Loading up so they can say they cut back? Or converting consultants to FTEs?
Who cares?
Luxon just ticks boxes. He's a corporate guy. (Untested tho. Never had to face any tough situations afaik.)
If they can spin the numbers to show how very excellent they've been - that's all that counts.
And the ledger doesn't include the environment, or a few mortgagee sales / suicides, which are all just collateral damage from doing 'business'.
Agree. I've spent a bit of time in the Herald comments recently and you've be eaten alive with a comment like that. You have to be a paying subscriber to comment / like and it's just a National / Act echo chamber, and they don't realise it. The discussions are much more balanced on this site.
That is the rub. Undoing things for sake of it just as counterproductive as doing things for the sake of having nothing else to do. Akin to raising staff numbers because you can. Hence the scenario, if the NZH headline is correct, Health Ministry cut 134 positions rather than have their executives reduce their packages.
Your problem is in the first sentence buddy, listening to the radio news! Have you not figured out rnz and most main stream media are bent left wokesters. They will brain wash you to believe the government are not getting anything done. Tune into the platform mate and you will here something factual
More good work being done…entirely no need for them:
Aussie Airbnb landlords have been claiming full-year tax deductions when they only let their properties for a fraction of the year. Seems like it's coming to an end.
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