Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today (or if you work from home, before you shutdown your laptop).
MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes to report today. All rates are here. And note, you can compare mortgage offers with our new calculator that takes into account other costs and cashback incentives, here.
TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
None here either. All updated term deposit rates less than 1 year are here, for 1-5 years, they are here.
A MOOD CHANGE
The Q4-2025 updated of the ASB investor confidence survey reveals better optimism. But the details are disparate. Auckland attitudes are now positive than national ones. Perceptions of a home as the best returning investment have dropped to their lowest level since first measured in 2015, with under 30s driving the shift to other investments, particularly the share market with confidence jumping sharply. Global and domestic issues continue to strongly influence the mood.
REVERSING
Following the series of weak diary auction results, BNZ's economists have reduced their milk price forecast for the current season. They now forecast a farmgate milk price of $9.50 per kilogram of milk solids for the current season, down from $10.25. Fonterra is currently forecasting $10 but that too may get reviewed soon.
BIG FEE JUMP
The Department of Internal Affairs has announced a fee increase for applying for citizenship. The price of applying for an adult will increase from $470.20 to $560, and the price of a child (under 16) from $235.10 to $280. The fee for registering citizenship by descent will increase from $204.40 to $243.
NZX50 FIRMS
As at 3pm, the overall NZX50 index is up +0.5% so far on Thursday following global trends. That puts it also down -1.5% over the past five working days. And it is up +2.5% year-to-date. From a year ago it is now up +5.2%. Market heavyweight F&P Healthcare is up +0.6% so far today. Infratil, Gentrack, Chorus, and SkyCity casino gain while Kathmandu, Oceania, Tourism Holdings, and a2 Milk ease.
WE ARE TALKING 'ENORMOUS'
In Wednesday Wall Street trade, Nvidia shares traded essentially flat (+0.5%) to the close, after which their Q3 results were released. These results were released into a market that was concluding that AI valuations may have been over-cooked. But the released results were stellar (again) and in after-market trading Nvidia has risen +4.9% so far. But at some point investors will come to the conclusion that endless results like this can't continue. Nvidia currently trades 30x future earnings. By most measures, that is gambling you won't get caught when the music stops, and there will always be "a greater fool". Nvidia currently has a market capitalisation of US$4,530,000,000,000, which is sixteen times New Zealand's annual GDP, two-and-a-half time greater than Australia's.
DRILLING DOWN
Australia released its GDP by State (they call it GSP). On a real basis for the year to June 2025, NSW expanded +0.9%, Victoria by +1.1%, Queensland by +2.2%, South Australia by +1.0% and Western Australia by +1.3% from the equivalent 2023/24 year. The national rise was +1.4%. But on a per capita basis, only Queensland and Tasmania recorded gains. Nationally it was a -0.3% decline per capita.
ON HOLD FOR NOW
As widely anticipated, the People’s Bank of China kept its key lending rates at record lows for a sixth consecutive month in November. But there is increasing talk that they will be [pressured into reducing them at some stage to weigh against below-target growth.
'MORE TAXES, LESS SPENDING'
In Australia, the IMF told them that they should hike their GST, abandon their tax cuts, and spend more carefully if it wants to keep a fiscally sustainable economy.
SWAP RATES FIRMER
Wholesale swap rates are probably firmer today. Keep an eye on our chart below which will record the final positions closer to 5pm. The 90 day bank bill rate was down -1 bp at 2.48% on Wednesday. Today, the Australian 10 year bond yield is up +5 bps at 4.48%. The China 10 year bond rate is little-changed at 1.81%. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is up +3 bps at 4.29%. The RBNZ data is now all delayed with Wednesday's rate is down -7 bps at 4.21%. The UST 10yr yield is up +2 bps at 4.14%.
EQUITIES TURN POSITIVE
The local equity market is now up +0.6% in Thursday trade so far. The ASX200 is up +1.1% in afternoon trade. Tokyo has gained +3.5% at its open. Hong Kong is up +0.4% and Shanghai is up +0.2%. Singapore is also up +0.2% at its open. Wall Street ended its Wednesday trade before the Nvidia result with the S&P500 up +0.4%.
OIL EASES
The oil price in the US has fallen -US$1 to just on US$59.50/bbl and the international Brent price is now just over US$63.50/bbl.
CARBON PRICE FIRMS SLIGHTLY
There have again been very few trades today and the price has firmed ever-so-slightly, now to $44/NZU. The next official carbon auction is on December 3, 2025 and likely heading for another failure. See our daily chart tracker of the NZU price for carbon, courtesy of emsTradepoint.
GOLD FIRMS AGAIN
In early Asian trade, gold is up +US$18/oz from this time yesterday, now at US$4078/oz.
NZD LOWER AGAIN
The Kiwi dollar is down -40 bps from this time yesterday at just on 56 USc. Against the Aussie we are down another -30 bps at 86.5 AUc. Against the euro we are down -10 bps at 48.6 euro cents. This all means the TWI-5 is down -30 bps at just under at 60.8.
BITCOIN WITH NO NET CHANGE
The bitcoin price is now at US$92,539 and a net -0.2% dip from this time yesterday. In between it got down as low as US$88,617. Volatility has stayed moderate at just on +/- 2.3%.
Daily exchange rates
Select chart tabs
Daily swap rates
Select chart tabs
This soil moisture chart is animated here.
Keep abreast of upcoming events by following our Economic Calendar here ».
18 Comments
The Office Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) delinquency rate in the U.S. spiked to an unprecedented 11.8% in October.
This surpasses the peak seen during the GFC global financial crisis and the highest level ever.
Wolfie Richter: Older office towers are getting crushed by a flight to quality and by corporate downsizing of office space due to continued working from home, as the much ballyhooed RTO has stalled. Even newer office towers are getting crushed by corporate downsizing and consolidation of their office footprints.
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/11/01/office-cmbs-delinquency-rate-hits-rec…
Garnish it with the impacts of A.I. on the need for floorspace c a r n a g e
So CBA's share price down 21% from ATH in June. Ask yourself why when they're making out like bandits and are arguably backstopped by the taxpayer. Only the 3rd time it has fallen >20% this century: GFC it fell approx 50% and Covid crash approx 25%.
Meanwhile, CBA head honcho Matt Comyn says reimbursing hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to its lower income customers would be an “appropriation” of shareholder money.
“It’s not merely a question of just handing the money over. It’s, of course, not my or our money. It’s the money of our owners.
“And I think perhaps there’s a sort of harsher interpretation of how a shareholder may think of that, which is, well, it’s effectively appropriation of their property.”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/nov/18/cba-boss-says-repaying-exc…
Matt sounds like the sort of guy that would be one of the first up against the wall, when the revolution comes.
(With acknowledgements to Douglas Adams)
In some respects, he's correct. And we have to understand that poor people are of limited value to banks. But he could go down the rabbit hole and also explain why bank deposits do not belong to account holders. He could explain that depositors are little more than creditors. Most people think that banks "custody" depositors' money, but that's not really true.
All part of the con.
it we all decided to buy 1 ounce of physical gold coin they would need to do a capital rasie , across NZ and Aussie this would be 32 million coins..... thats a decent drop in profit
Banks will never advise you to buy physical..... its too deflationary on their balance sheets
They would simply align with the other ruling elite parties to prevent this from happening.
gets harder once you own BTC and can invest in gold back crypto in a trusted place like switzerland etc... You dont need to hold it, just buy BTC via NZD and immediately move to the gold backed crypto, so you do not just have to ban buying gold but BTC and any other crypt, its a path to anything, apparently in NY you can buy lines with it.
cracks are getting wider these days in their ability to stop you, or if you have some now you just buy a cheap boat and have an accident
banning gold ownership would sink fiat here, its an obvious we are fuc%ed signal, and there is a reasonable gold to BTC derivative market now, i think the stable gate is open and there is no horse
You dont need to hold it, just buy BTC via NZD and immediately move to the gold backed crypto,
As one of the first owners of the Perth Mint digital gold token, I know what you're saying. I didn't even need to buy the ol' rat poision first. I purchased it with NZD. Unfortunately, the idea never took off and it was discontinued.
The Bitcoin treasury companies have been tanking. Negative returns across the board in 2025. My water cooler mates are chuckling and saying things like "glad I didn't buy any of that crap".
But something interesting has come out of the woodwork. Renaissance Technologies, the legendary quantitative hedge fund founded by mathematician Jim Simons and renowned for its Medallion Fund's extraordinary 66% average annual returns since 1988, recently disclosed a new position in MicroStrategy. According to the latest 13F filing, the firm holds 225,730 shares valued at approximately $46 million as of Nov, 2025.
Unlike traditional value investors, Renaissance relies on proprietary algorithms and statistical models to identify mispricings. Their stake signals that MSTR's Bitcoin-tied dynamics - such as premium pricing relative to its BTC holdings - may offer exploitable edges in volatility, correlations, or momentum. This is especially telling given Renaissance's Medallion fund received SEC approval in March 2025 to trade CME Bitcoin futures, hinting at broader crypto integration without direct spot exposure
I owned Ren Tech shares back while I was merging Bankers Trust and DB trading floor in London after the buy out, this is 20 years ago plus.. A NY based PM visiting London saw me on a Bloomberg terminal after hours looking at fund share ownership declarations and suggest I look at ren tech, bastards took share private, still bagged a decent profit.
IMHO Ren Tech is probably just thinking that BTC is undervalued vs a basket of other assets... they play valuations within a basket all the time.
I helped integrate the arbitrage Tech of BT and DB, Guys with double PHDs from LSE and Cambridge or Oxford in Maths and finance etc, mainly basket arbitrage vs index back then but was leading edge staff at the time.
Again the BTC derivative license simply expands their ability to limit risk across a wider range of asset classes. I would not read too much into it
Ren Tech used to like employing people who could code language translation (before AI) and had the biggest daily suck of financial data , electrical use , shipping units etc etc, I think he was building a market language model of the market, its intonation, stress etc
Again the BTC derivative license simply expands their ability to limit risk across a wider range of asset classes. I would not read too much into it
Not reading too much into it and it's a relatively small allocation relative to their whole portfolio. Just thought it was interesting and I like reading what the technical people are betting on.
the wider the base the more stable the structure
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360893564/david-seymour-says-winston-p…
Half way down this article there is a photograph
Never shake hands with a Crocodile
IMHO ACT will drop next election, NZF will gain and still go with National.
Sadly I too think that's likely: hopefully not too much of a rout, the triumvirate has held it together pretty well against the odds (& the personalities involved). There's much thats +ve about their usual way of teamworking, playing to different strengths & covering gaps.
I'd miss Brooke.
i dont think a right voter will jump left, but i think many right voters think the ACT waitangi thing was folly and we should be concentrating on economic issues vs culture. Which is sad for act, this and the ministry for red tape have simply not dleivered
TOP rebranded with a new leader. Apart from Jack Tame jumping down her throat for half of the interview she seemed composed. Weather they can sell their ideas to the masses is the next step, however I hope they have a good strategy as TOP for their great ideas last election, just didn't have the exposure and engagement that could have helped them succeed. Perhaps with all of the hopelessness of the last and current regime, people are ready to analyse their options in more depth and think longer term next year.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.