What happened Wednesday

Economy / news

A review of things you need to know before you sign off on Wednesday; ASB changes rates, asking prices slip, dairy prices retreat, 3 old into 1 new, car sales rise in EV surge, swaps stable, NZX stable, NZD rises, & more

[updated]

1st Jul 26, 3:59pm by David Chaston

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
ASB raised & lowered some fixed rates today. Details here. All current mortgage rates are here. And note, you can compare mortgage offers with our unique calculator that takes into account other costs and cashback incentives, here.

TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
ASB cut TD rates for terms 2-5 years today. All updated term deposit rates less than 1 year are here, for 1-5 years, they are here.

SELLING IN AUCKLAND IS HARD
Asking prices on Realestate.co.nz fell for a 4th consecutive month down almost -$60,000 since February while stock for sale hits a 12-year high. The number of weeks of sales the current listing volumes represent has risen to 25 nationally, 33 in Auckland and one of the highest of the major urban areas. In Wellington it is 20 weeks, in Canterbury just 14 weeks.

BUYING CARS WITH EV GUSTO
Passenger car sales were +21% higher in June than in June 2025. That is an extra +1729 new vehicles sold between the two periods. Interestingly, there were 2610 EVs sold in the month, completing a set of four months where EVs sold an average of 1800 per month. And that is the best set of months since when the taxpayer was subsiding their adoption. Used imports sold rose +768 from the same month in 20256 to 7567.

RETREATING
There was another dairy Pulse auction overnight, bringing lower prices again. AMF fell -2.5% from last week's event, butter was down -0.5%, SMP was down a chunky -6.2% and WMP slipped -0.6%. These build on trends we have seen since mid-May and given the rise in global milk production by the main exporters (New Zealand included), it is a trend likely to continue for a while yet.

NZ MOVES FROM THREE AML/CFT REGULATORS TO ONE
From today, July 1, the Department of Internal Affairs becomes NZ's sole Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act regulator, with entities that have until now been supervised by the Reserve Bank and Financial Markets Authority moving under DIA oversight. Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee says this means all of the about 6,100 reporting entities are now under one regulator, meaning "clearer guidance, more consistent oversight, and less confusion for businesses trying to do the right thing."

TARANAKI PUBLIC HAS ITS SAY ON PROPOSED SALE OF TSB
The Toi Foundation, the charitable trust that owns TSB, says it has received 1203 written submissions on the proposed sale of TSB to Heartland Group Holdings. See more on this here.

NZX50 MARKS TIME
As at 3pm, the overall NZX50 index is little-changed, with a weekly rise of +1.6%. It is up +0.2% from six months ago. From a year ago it is now up +6.9%. Market heavyweight F&P Healthcare is up +0.9% so far today. SkyCity casino, Auckland Airport, Hallensteins and AirNZ rise as Vulcan Steel, Briscoes, Fletcher Building and Vector weight on the NZX50.

UPDATED FUNCTIONALITY
For readers who use our NZX50 company profiles (click on a profile code),you will notice an updated look and functionality on the company profile pages. No data is different, just the way we manage it and how you can access the charting. This resource isn't for expert investor, rather aimed at novice investors who would like to explore company performance comparisons on a consistent, easy-to-understand basis.

JASON PARIS STEPPING DOWN
Infratil-owned One.NZ is getting a new CEO. Jason Paris is stepping down, saying the business is performing well. He will be replaced by CFO Nick Judd. Paris had previously been involved with the transformation of Telecom to Spark, and then took the Vodafone NZ business through to the Infratil purchase in its new iteration as One.NZ

MULTI-UNIT BUILDING CONSENTS A DRAG ON AU BUILDING PERMITS
In Australia, their May building consent data shows that the number of dwelling approved were +5.3% higher than year-ago levels. But they fell -1.1% from April. Private sector house consents rose +2.8%, to the highest level since September 2021. This is the fourth consecutive month with over 10,000 private sector houses approved. This are quite soft for multi-unit dwellings however.

FURTHER IMPROVEMENT
In China, their manufacturing conditions as measured by the S&P Global/RatingDog factory PMI improved further in June, completing their strongest quarter since 2020. This result was better than the official version but not quite as good as many analysts had expected. Input price inflation slowed to a five-month low while employment rose at its quickest rate since August 2023.

AN EIGHT YEAR HIGH
Japan's Tankan industrial sentiment indexes have reached their highest level since 2018 in June. They came in at a level that was better than expected for large manufacturers, but a bit more modestly improved for service sector companies.

KOREAN EXPORTS EXPLODE HIGHER
South Korea is becoming Taiwanese, at least as regards its export prowess. Korean exports were up +71% in May from a year ago, to a record US$102 bln for the month. (For reference Taiwan exported US$78.5 bln in May, up +52% from a year ago.) However, their June factory PMI shows their softest rise in new orders in 2026 so far which limited production growth. And price and supply pressures remained pronounced.

SWAP RATES LITTLE-CHANGED
Wholesale swap rates will likely be on little-changed at the short end and firmer for longer durations today. Keep an eye on our chart below which will record the final positions closer to 5pm. The 90 day bank bill rate was up +3 bps at 2.72% on Tuesday. Today, the Australian 10 year bond yield is up +6 bps at 4.79% from this time yesterday. The China 10 year bond rate up +2 bps at 1.74%. The Japanese 10 year bond is up +5 bps at 2.72% today. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now at 4.42%, up +4 bps from yesterday. (The RBNZ data is now 'prior day' with the Tuesday rate down -2 bps at 4.36%.) The UST 10yr yield is up +10 bps at 4.47%, a notable shift higher likely based on risk aversion (from AI and Trump's Gulf War uncertainties)..

EQUITIES UP & DOWN
The local equity market is marginally firmer from yesterday, now up just +0.1%. But the ASX200 is down -0.5% so far. Tokyo has opened up +0.3%. Hong Kong has fallen -0.6% but Shanghai is up +1.0% at its open today. Singapore is unchanged at its open. Wall Street ended its Tuesday session the S&P500 up +0.8% while the Nasdaq was up +1.5%.

OIL PRICES EASE VERY SLIGHTLY
American oil prices are down -50 USc from yesterday with the WTI benchmark now just under US$70/bbl, while the international Brent price is just under US$73.50/bbl and also di[ping -50 USc.

CARBON PRICE STALLS
There has again been little trading and the price has held at $55/NZU. See our daily chart tracker of the NZU price for carbon, courtesy of emsTradepoint.

GOLD STSAYS DOWN
In early Asian trade, gold is up +US$15/oz from yesterday, now at US$3980/oz. Silver is little-changed at just under US$58/oz.

NZD FIRMER
The Kiwi dollar is up +20 bps against the USD from yesterday at this time, now just on 56.7 USc. Against the Aussie we are unchanged at 82.2 AUc. Against the euro we are up +20 bps at 49.7 euro cents. This all means the TWI-5 is now just over 60.6 and up +20 bps from this time yesterday.

BITCOIN DOWN AGAIN
The bitcoin price is now at US$58,936 and down -1.6% from this time yesterday. Volatility has been modest at just on +/- 1.6%.

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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24 Comments

by Phoenix (FKA JC) | 1st Jul 26, 4:12pm 1782879164

Japan's Tankan industrial sentiment indexes have reached their highest level since 2018 in June. They came in at a level that was better than expected for large manufacturers, but a bit more modestly improved for service sector companies.

While many are calling for JPY to fall off a cliff and fear of a global market meltdown as JPY carry trade positions are unwound and Japanese industrials repatriate money.

by Phoenix (FKA JC) | 1st Jul 26, 4:30pm 1782880249

Many think Japan's "lost decades" were caused by the Plaza Accord (revaluing JPY against USD) but this also happened to Germany who didn't suffer the same "lost decades" as Japan.

Unlike Japan, Germany hadn't previously engaged in many years of unproductive investment (like Japan's famous "bridges to nowhere") and this unproductive investment hadn't been backed by a massive increase in the country's debt burden. If you look at other countries that had investment-heavy growth models similar to that of Japan, most obviously the USSR and Brazil in the 1960s and early 1970s, they all suffered from crises or "lost decades", even though none of them entered into major, Plaza-Accord-style currency appreciations.

History doesn't tell us that any country that does a Plaza-Accord-style appreciation suffers from lost decades of growth (Germany and France didn't).

It tells us instead that any country that engages in many years of non-productive investment to keep GDP growth higher than the real economy can productively deliver, and that runs up huge corresponding debt burdens, is likely to suffer from lost decades as the excess capacity is gradually written down and the hidden losses allocated.

Aotearoa and Aussie need to face up to this as well. At least Japan has some infrastructure to show for it.

by Let me be Frank | 1st Jul 26, 5:13pm 1782882794

Have a look at the respective trade balances....Japan has fluctuated into a trade deficit (Chinese competion?...a la EVs?)...Germany yet to get there.

by Colin Maxwell | 1st Jul 26, 5:20pm 1782883239

PUMP AND DUMP - IT'S WHAT THEY DO

The 'lost decades" were principally caused by... wait for it... of all things, CENTRAL BANKS.

As Prof. Richard Werner has laid out in his wonderful book "Princes of the Yen", in the 1980s the Bank of Japan used a mechanism known as "window guidance" to assign mandatory lending quotas to commercial banks.

The central bank directed this massive influx of credit into unproductive, speculative real estate and stock markets rather than into the real, productive economy.

The BOJ intentionally burst the bubble it had created by abruptly raising interest rates and tightening loan quotas. This was done to trigger widespread distress and force corporate and political leaders into adopting structural reforms, such as the deregulation of the financial sector.

The subsequent stagnation occurred because the BOJ failed to stimulate the economy after the crash. Instead of increasing the flow of credit to revive the economy, the central bank’s policies kept troubled banks alive (creating "zombie banks") while credit creation remained suppressed, resulting in decades of deflation and zero growth.

It hardly bears thinking about where the Japanese economy would be today if only they had followed Werner's roadmap. Before the "Lost Decades" phase they were on a trajectory to overtake US GDP, especially in terms of a productive GDP profile.

In spite of all of this, Japan still manages to boast the largest NIIP (Net international Investment Position) at ~$3.5 trillion, supported by decades of massive current account surpluses.

Germany generally sits in #2 position and China at #3. The worst is the US with a NIIP of ~$26 trillion.

France the 2nd worst at ~$1triliion.

Australia sits typically badly at around $500 billion, driven by an historical reliance on foreign capital to fund domestic "growth".

And the top 3 for NIIP per head of population are Norway #1 with their monumental wealth fund, #2 Switzerland, home of significant banking and Big-Pharma wealth, and #3 Singapore, a global financial hub that holds significant net financial assets relative to the country's population.

by DonKerrBab | 1st Jul 26, 5:51pm 1782885118

Nothing to do with population decline?

by powerdownkiwi | 1st Jul 26, 5:56pm 1782885383

Or the fact that they have no local resources (why Pearl Harbour?) ?

Or that they had had to do the property-ponzi thing earlier than some?

by Colin Maxwell | 1st Jul 26, 6:08pm 1782886133

And you didn't read what I actually wrote either, did you, PDK.

by Colin Maxwell | 1st Jul 26, 6:17pm 1782886670

DKB... you said... "Nothing to do with population decline?"

Yes it contributes too, but please note, what I actually wrote... "The 'lost decades" were principally caused by... wait for it... of all things, CENTRAL BANKS."

by Let me be Frank | 1st Jul 26, 6:12pm 1782886339

May be a factor but population in Japan peaked around 15 years ago...but autos are a big chunk of their economy and they bet against electric....given the recent energy events sentiment may be moving.

by Phoenix (FKA JC) | 1st Jul 26, 4:17pm 1782879459

Trump’s 2025 annual financial disclosure suggests his crypto- and memecoin-related ventures generated at least around $1.4 billion in income for the year.

How does he do it?

- World Liberty Financial token sales: About $580–595 million from token sales

- Meme coin licensing royalties (CIC Digital / $TRUMP): A Trump-branded memecoin business, CIC Digital LLC, generated roughly $635–636 million in income, largely royalties under a licensing deal with Celebration Coins for the $TRUMP meme coin

- Additional crypto and stablecoin ventures: He also reported hundreds of millions more from stablecoin-related businesses, equity sales (e.g., a sale tied to Stablecoin Holdco), and crypto wallet holding

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/financial-disclosure-1-bi…

by Palmtree08 | 1st Jul 26, 5:25pm 1782883551

Just a continuation of earning from vice and grift, without producing anything net positive for humanity. The only time he's ever worked a sweat was between the green and the golf cart and with porn stars.

by Colin Maxwell | 1st Jul 26, 5:26pm 1782883563

THE MOU WAS DEAD IN THE WATER BEFORE ANY OF THE PARTIES EVEN MET...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWgnKAQh9EU

Henningson is an incredibly brave and knowledgeable ME commentator based in, of all places, London.

For an entire raft of reasons, the Straits of Hormuz remain months away from any return to normality. The situation in Lebanon is just one of these impediments.

The US PTB are on the same genocidal page as Israel - both drool over the prospect of a devastating Lebanese civil war. Its fits their historical imperial model.

32:50... HENNINGSEN... "We have seen it too often - this is the same game being played now, but the results are devastating and so much more is at stake - the stability of the entire region is at stake.

Iran has decided to create this hinge regarding South Lebanon for the region. and the leverage has been working - it has created a global conversation and it has put a lot of pressure on Israel and the Trump Admin, and everything that they are doing right now is to wiggle out of that corner.

That's what all of this theatre in Beirut is about. And to do that, Trump needs to undermine and sabotage his own MOU, and he will get support for that, because the GOP and the warmongering crowd in Washington are saying that this is a bad deal already, and so is the Israeli lobby.

They have publicly stated that they are going to dismantle the MOU in this process, because it is bad for Israel. the are already saying, oh its a bad deal just like the JCPOA.

I am not going to give Trump the credit that some of the other pundits do on some of these podcasts - people are saying, oh DT doesn't really want this war, he never wanted this war - well, I don't believe that for one second - he did the war."

NIMA... " I think he is the only one in that admin who really wanted this war. He thought that he was going to get something big out of this war."

PH... "It is irrelevant what he may have said on the campaign trail, or in a sideways comment that he might have made about going to war with Iran, how that would be a disaster - it doesn't matter because he did it - twice he engaged in an undeclared war of aggression against Iran in the last year.

I don't think Trump is serious - I don't think he understands what he is into - I don't think he has any idea of how to get out of it, and personally I don't think he has the courage, politically, to stand up to the Israel lobby, or to stand up to the hawks in his own party quite frankly, and certainly not the media - he will just be manipulated.

If the American establishment, the media, the political establishment, the consensus in Washington - if they want more war, they are going to get more war, and DT is not going to have any say in that at all - he would just go along with it. He is not a very strong political leader - he is very weak, one of the weakest political leaders in history..."

by Phoenix (FKA JC) | 1st Jul 26, 4:59pm 1782881949

The Orange Swan is just a puppet. The financial‑industrial and military‑industrial complexes operate above nation‑state politics and use figures like Trump instrumentally to advance capital‑allocation and control agendas.

by powerdownkiwi | 1st Jul 26, 5:32pm 1782883963

Agreed. And has done for decades.

Which means there's no conscience at the helm. And even those who sort-of had one - Carter, Obama - got fatally compromised.

CM above gets the geopolitics about right - except he needs to ask Why? Always ask Why? For instance, if the US was really self-sufficient in energy, and if extracting more meant you had somehow created even more yet-to-be extracted.... why would Trum be bothering with Venezuela and Iran? And eyeing-off Canada and Greenland? Megalomania isn't enough reason...

by Colin Maxwell | 1st Jul 26, 5:50pm 1782885010

"Megalomania isn't enough reason... "

Agreed, PDK - perhaps you have you forgotten the little story about the FIC, the MIC and the TIC?

THE FIC THE MIC AND THE TIC

What we are seeing play out right now is a full-on war between the old forever-war model oligarchs and a new model that is arguably equally terrifying for Mainstreet.

For decades the FIC (Financial Industrial Complex) sat above the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) as they networked together.

Now we see the novel TIC (Tech Industrial Complex) enter the mix, as it attempts to become the new seat of power which overarches the nationalist desires of both governments and societies, and even established international alliances and traditional power-blocs as well.

The old model (the FIC+MIC network) represented perpetual war, bloodshed and chaos, and a huge revenue stream for the 0.001% of humanity - IOWs, solely for the plutocrats at the head of this macabre human food chain.

The new TIC model, which is potentially just as terrifying, are the new kids on the block.

They are building the new AI system, the data centers, the robots, and the digital infrastructure, for a mass-surveillance network to invoke their vision of a novel techno-gulag, in order to gain control over the masses.

The old and the new, both rely on starkly different circumstances to exist, hence the civil war unfolding right now.

FIC/MIC thrives on chaos and forever wars, whereas TIC needs relative stability, as you cannot build the trillions of dollars of infrastructure required for the techno-gulag build, when a country or a region is literally on fire.

As Andre points out at 23:00... "We are watching a civil war inside the profit machine itself - two factions fighting over which business model will rule the future."

This is why the Iran war and the Gulf States are so critical in this global power game.

Countries with huge sovereign wealth funds like UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, which incidentally occupy four of the top ten spots behind only Norway and China, now have a existential situation on their hands, after Trump and his fellow morons set half the region ablaze, when they chose to break every international and constitutional law in the book, in their idiotic attacks on Iran.

These Gulf States have combined funding capacity that measures in the trillions, which is why they undertook to fund the multi-billion dollar return of Iranian capital if/when the US reneged on the latest MOU. These billions are minuscule in the whole scheme of Gulf capital going forward within a new financial/security architecture.

Their message to the facilitators of the Lake Lucerne meeting was, that they cannot afford to let this MOU founder.

Also, Saudi Arabia, the largest player in the region, has kicked the US into touch, and replaced their security alignment with Pakistan - a major local nuclear power that has a huge interest finally achieving some stability in the region.

Of course we are far from out of the woods yet, and not the least because of the Israel/Gaza/Lebanon crisis, along with the Trump Admin's desire to drag the head-chopper Syrian regime into the Lebanon quagmire.

Andrei Jikh has just done a splendid job of outlining this global power-game. He complements Simon Dixon's extensive research on this subject... see the link below...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4xoOQ32KNM

See less

by powerdownkiwi | 1st Jul 26, 5:53pm 1782885207

'Countries with huge sovereign wealth funds like UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, which incidentally occupy four of the top ten spots behind only Norway and China, now have a existential situation on their hands,

Those countries HAD wealth - they had energy stocks.

'Funds' are so much piffle. No energy equals nothing extracted, processed, proffered. consumed or discarded. At which point money - and stocks and cash-in-able expectations - are essentially worthless.

If you've got the Mona Lisa under your arm and you haven't eaten for 3 weeks - it's worth a pizza. Maybe half a pizza.

by AN Other | 1st Jul 26, 5:33pm 1782883989

RNZ National has just released a 30 minute interview between Guyon Espiner and former US Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell. If nothing else, it is interesting to hear the point of view of what I'd call the Republican Federal Government.

Things like, Iran is the bad guy because the closed the state of Hormuz and New Zealand needs to do more for the USA.

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting Iran are the good guys. Any state that sponsors international terrorism and murders large swathes of its citizens for having a different point of view deserves no sympathy.

Here's a fairly ugly link to the podcast:

If the link above doesn't work, this one will take you to the appropriate webpage (it's the podcast dated 01 July 2026): 30 with Guyon Espiner podcast | RNZ

by powerdownkiwi | 1st Jul 26, 5:40pm 1782884444

The US has been self-aggrandising vis-a-vis the rest of the planet, for some time.

Donna Fargo sings "Happiest Girl in the Whole USA" on Marty Robbins' Spotlight - YouTube

It's endemic. And that means the 'others' are either useful hack allies - cohorts of the willing; you're either with us or you're against us - or 'them'. Just like Israeli soldiers don't see Palestinians as human.

Espiner might even get there, yet. Still swallows the shyte that money is a store of wealth and that growth is good - but he's on the way.

by redcows | 1st Jul 26, 5:45pm 1782884713

One of the things he asked in the short version I heard was "what have you done for me". Not the US but ME. Very orange man griftish.

by ghytresd | 1st Jul 26, 11:17pm 1782904672

It's a common meme/turn of phrase used in pop culture over there, that seems to have been lost on Espiner also so didn't quite land.

Not literal, but an odd choice in that setting

by interesting1234 | 2nd Jul 26, 8:35am 1782938129

He is not a very strong political leader - he is very weak, one of the weakest political leaders in history.

I'd argue that is because he is not being a leader for the people, but for himself. To milk the public exposure for personal gain and be so rich he doesn't have to deal with any fallout from it. It is a job to him, nothing more, and one that comes with very significant privilege and financial gain.

Also beggars belief how Adrian Orr managed to get a salary equal to, or greater than Trump paid for by all of us.

by Phoenix (FKA JC) | 1st Jul 26, 6:01pm 1782885684

Aussie Ponzi looking weary. Sydney’s auction market has cratered to its worst levels since the GFC, with Labor tax reforms blamed for wiping $75,000 off home values in three months.

https://www.realestate.com.au/news/sydney-property-market-in-decline-as…

by powerdownkiwi | 1st Jul 26, 8:23pm 1782894184

Value?

Wiping?

From whence cometh these assumed assumptions?

by JimboJones | 1st Jul 26, 8:48pm 1782895693

They may need to resort to toilet paper like us kiwi plebs