Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.
MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
None today. But BNZ announced that it is decreasing its overdraft base rates by -0.3% on April 16. Their new base rate will be 8.90%, to which risk margins are added depending on the client's financial strength.
TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
FE Investments was placed in receivership today. KordaMentha is the receiver. No other information is available at this time although it is worth noting that this finance company had its sub-investment grade credit rating reduced before the Covid-19 crisis. They had two big related party Auckland property deals which were an issue which resulted in an ASX listing suspension.
SCREWING THE SCRUM
There were three Government bond tenders today and the heavy hand of the RBNZ was in them all. The resurfaced April 2023 bond with a 5.50% coupon attracted heavy interest. $350 mln was offered and $977 mln was bid. The resulting yield was 0.50% and far below the 3.36% when this bond was last tendered in May 2013. RBNZ bidding no doubt kept expectations low. The April 2029 tender for $250 mln came in with a yield of 1.12% (previously 1.50% in December) and a coverage ratio of 2.4x. The April 2037 tender for $250 mln came in with a yield of 1.76% (previously 2.57% on March 19, 2020) and a much more modest coverage ratio of 1.4x. With the RBNZ in there now, none of these tenders will ever 'fail' to be fully subscribed. How much the RBNZ ends up with depends on the yield they bid at, but there is no dobt they are acting to keep rates at these tenders very low.
POWERING DOWN
Electricity use is falling quite substantially now, down -17% on a 14 day change basis through to March 31.
ON A ROLL BEFORE A HARD STOP
Barfoot & Thompson's March sales figures show the market was on a roll before the lockdown with record average and median selling prices.
MADE PERMANENT
Westpac Group has appointed their former CFO, Peter King, as a permanent CEO, upgrading him from the "interim" status he held after Bian Hartzer resigned following the issues arising from their Australian banking inquiry. King gets a AU$2 mln annual salary and gets a one year 'notice' period which means if he is fired he will get $2 mln in lieu of notice. He also gets substantial short and long term incentives, mostly holdovers from his contract as CFO.
MANAGED EXIT/ENTRY
The Government has approved a second daily flight from Doha to Auckland by Qatar Airways to evacuate foreign tourists and other nationals needing to return to European countries. That is in addition to Air New Zealand charter flights from New Zealand to Europe for European governments. Officials are "exploring" the extent to which New Zealanders can return in the planes on the way back. New Zealanders returning home from overseas will continue to be subject to strict screening and self-isolation requirements; and domestic travel by New Zealanders will continue to be reserved for essential workers only.
NO MORE DIVIDENDS FOR NOW
The RBNZ offers banks more help to encourage them to keep lending ... but at a cost, as it restricts them from paying dividends until the economic outlook improves. Aussie bank shareholders won't be happy.
STAY UPDATED
We have a tally page of all the policy initiatives and actions taken to weight against a fast-slowing economy. It is updated as soon as new announcements are made.
LOCAL UPDATE
There are now 797 Covid-19 cases identified in New Zealand, with another +89 new cases today and higher than the +61 increase yesterday. The number of clusters has been reduced to six. Still only one person has died here. There are 13 people in hospital with the disease yesterday.
GLOBAL UPDATE
Worldwide, the latest compilation of Covid-19 data is here. The global tally is now 932,000 and up +74,000 from the 858,000 we had this time yesterday. 23% of all cases globally are in the US and they are up +25,000 in one day to 213,300. Australia has now over 4860 cases, and 20 deaths. Global deaths now exceed 47,000. Italy has been now joined by Spain with more than 100,000 cases. Germany will soon have more than China. France has now recorded more deaths than China. The UK has matched both Italy and Spain with the largest fatality problem with 8% of those with the disease already dead.
AROUND THE BOURSES
The NZX50 Capital Index is down -1.9% today from yesterday. And the ASX200 is down -2.3% so far. Shanghai has just opened flat, Hong Kong is down -0.6 and Tokyo is down about -0.9% in early trade. In New York earlier today, the S&P500 closed down -4.4%.
GOING DOWN
In Australia, the widely-watched NAB business confidence survey for March shows confidence collapsed there. It will only get worse in April.
SWAP RATES UPDATE
Update: The swap rate curve steepened today with the two year down to a record-low 0.51% and a -2 bps fall, the five year up +1 bps and the ten year up +4 bps. We don't have wholesale swap rates movement details today yet. We will update this later in the day. The 90-day bank bill rate is unchanged at 0.49%. The Aussie Govt 10yr is up +5 bps to 0.75%. The China Govt 10yr is also up, up 2 bps at 2.66%. The NZ Govt 10 yr yield is still going against the trend, down -4 bps to 1.12%. The UST 10yr is down -8 bps today to 0.58% and a new record low.
NZ DOLLAR SOFTISH
The Kiwi dollar has slipped slightly lower to 59.2 USc. Against the Aussie we marginally firmer at 97.5 AUc. Against the euro we have stayed down at 54.1 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is little-changed at 65.8 and basically back to where it was a week ago.
BITCOIN RISES
The price of Bitcoin is firmer, up almost +5% in a day to US$6,636. The bitcoin price is charted in the currency set below.
This soil moisture chart is animated here.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
110 Comments
did anyone ever think they would see this?
https://www.worldoil.com/news/2020/3/31/oil-selling-below-10bbl-at-key-…
Why price of oil is a slight problem, for nearly everyone? There is no short answer to this, however, as most people may be aware, oil is at present the key to the modern, industrialized world. The USA created the "petro dollar". This translates as, "all oil must be traded using US$".
The petro dollar ensured that global use of US$ gave the US$ strength as the worlds reserve currency. You may have noticed a number of wars, Iraq (×2), Libya, Syria. Heavy use of sanctions against oil producing countries, like Iran, Venezuela and Russia. The key motive, always to affect some control over the supply, and hence price of a barrel of oil.
USA used to be net importer of oil, but developments in production, using a process called fracking, meant that countries like USA could produce oil, called shale oil. In recent years, the USA, through aggressive production, actually became the worlds largest exporter of oil. Quite a turn around.
Now, this may sound like a happy American great again story, unfortunately it's more af an America Grate again story.
The global supply of oil has been plentiful for sometime, it's just shale is expensive to produce, ideally, for shale producers, the price needs to be around the $100usd per barrel mark, which at times, though not recently, it has been.
So to keep the price up. America repeatedly asks OPEC to cut production, which OPEC has consistently done. However, those shale producers have clocked up a lot of debt, producing when they couldn't afford to. So everytime OPEC cut production, American producers increased production. Self defeating perhaps for American producers, and understandably, somewhat annoying for OPEC.
The point that we have reached is OPEC and Russia have grown a little tired of helping shale producers out, so now thay are in an apparent war with each other (oil war that is) and are increasing production. Hence the price has come down for a barrel, making it now near impossible for shale producers to pay their loans, which they weren't really doing anyway. Yet now, when their loans are up for renewal, there lenders are like," I don't think so." And so begins the great credit crunch. A credit crunch that has the potential to unzip a global credit crunch. And that is the start of another story. Needless to say, this oil war would be enough of a threat to the global financial system, on it's own, let alone when the world is at war with a virus, and as you may have noticed, not that many people, or organisations, are using much petrol. In fact, there is so much, some oil contracts in Canada are negative $$s per barrel. That's right, they will pay you to take it away.
Companies like Chevron, even borrowed money to pay dividends, and they are not alone in such actions.
Once oil producers begin to collapse, and they are, then the world will swing from the sublime to the ridiculous, and the price will recover, as there will be less oil drilled. Unfortunately, not before a massive credit crunch game of dominoes has played out.
So, apart from the deflationary impact of low prices (central banks hate deflation by the way) which will bring about a massive amount of money printing, which is inflationary in it's nature, which also happens to have a need to be used, or borrowed, causing more debt. Durkheim (the sociologist) referred to a downward amplification spiral, and this is kind of what he was talking about.
So that's an abbreviated version of why the price of oil is so important.(at least to those who owe a lot of money)
Hope it helps, at least a bit.
The Economist 1999 "Drowning in Oil" talked up $5 oil. Which pretty much sums up the problems with predictions - unless you a a Malthusian and just had your timing wrong for the past 200 years...
https://www.economist.com/leaders/1999/03/04/drowning-in-oil
first American oil company went into chapter 11 today more to come
https://www.ft.com/content/116fe93a-6fe7-400a-aedf-840ba9738743
There's no flaw at $0. While the variable costs might be $5/bbl the process of shutting-in wells, along with restarting wells, costs money. In some cases once closed they are never worth restarting. This, along with the potential of a bailout, is why negative oil prices might make sense in contango.
Glad to see people recall $200 oil at the peak of the previous super-cycle. We'll get there again for those that can afford to buy and hold the lowest cost producers.
looks like a global depression, no wonder the panic to lock us down
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/04/01/a-word-about-hong-kongs-retail-sales-…
Nothing is going to stop all the highly leveraged from collapsing in this market give it 1 more month and it will be the new normal for 1-2 years.
Also make sure when dealing with any business that is asking up front for money that it goes into a trust type account.
I can see many more Stonewood/SCF type collapses happening very soon which will further feed the collapse.
Carlos, the GFC wasn't a stock market bubble per se, it was huge poor quality loans being written then repackaged and sold across the world. When these loans went bad the institutions holding them went bankrupt. The stock market falls were because of this and this is why the banks needed bailing out as they had bought a sht ton of this bad debt.China escaped relatively untouched as their banks didn't purchase a huge amount of this repackaged debt.
This is way worse as it's a complete stop to huge amounts of real businesses causing a liquidity crisis across many many sectors and many many businesses within those sectors.
The unemployment, the business closures are all as a result of the liquidity crisis. Businesses have no money to pay for anything. Hence all the govt measures to provide cash / loans / staff subsidies etc.
China in this crisis is front centre as their factories are now idle because global demand for product has stopped stone dead.
It's the speed that's getting me. Even in the GFC it took months & years for things to play out. With Covid we're dealing with days & weeks. It's the quick & the dead out there. Good luck all.
That might be good for everyone in the long run. Face up to the reality and worse case scenarios. NZ isn't really strong in that respect.
We need to move forward and not stay stuck in what worked in the past i.e lets make everthing cheap in China and have NZ built on high immigration and debt bubbles etc.
We now have a reset upon us and the best way forward is to be first car out of the ranks.
Cut immigration to what jobs that are truly needed to be filled and look to redeploy Kiwis to jobs that make something worthwhile i.e high quality organic food/clothing that lasts/less milk powder and more finished dairy products/prefab small homes that are eco friendly and can be used anywhere in the world and even high end electronics and health care products.
We are small and have most resources here or in Australia to do anything but we need the govt to stump up some money to help startups do it and not just sell out once they have products to markets i.e they agree not to sell up without major penalty.
If we keep on our current couse we will end up a country of property investors/landlords and cafes with a sprinkling of tourists on the top.
I believe we may well have migration out of NZ as jobs dry up. It's an expensive place to be without a job.
Completely agree re the domestic production of real goods. Exporting jobs to low cost countries was always a really dumb idea ~ govt needs to be working right now on bringing back the easy ones like call centers and start an industry working group on how to incentivise firms to bring back jobs and production.
You will never ever get the govt to define "truly needed to be filled" in a way a rational person would; they always say 'skilled' but we always get Uber drivers and checkout operators. Make it pure money (an annual charge for work visas sufficient to train a Kiwi) and it could work but we would have to accept much higher wages for fruit picking, care-workers, etc.
I am surprised that no media is saying anything about how lucky the CCP is that this virus did not affect young people as much as older people. If the sole child of millions of Chinese had died, there would have been rioting and a regime change. No doubt about it.
They were playing with fire by allowing exotic animals to be eaten by those who saw some sort of dodgy benefits in eating such crap.
I have had many a Chinese person here in NZ say to me in the past "yeah, we eat anything". And then they would laugh. Not funny.
Been meetings all day, we looking cutting 10% come May, then further 5% workforce in June. We employ 5k plus. We have no confidence this government can produce any bounce. Subbies will be first to go. GR needs realise you don't borrow cover fixed OH, you cut costs if can't get T/O. 100k borrowed is a million in T/O if margins are good. Companies borrow for opportunity in growing T/O...not cover labour sitting at home, don't believe all you hear on wage subsidy, government is balking paying large companies...man the pain is going be huge
I talked to a friend in the UK this morning, he has a few summer housing lets ( by the sea) , he's always fully booked. Now his houses are all empty, the UK gov't has offered or is talking 10£ a house subsidy, he thinks they have absolutely no idea what they are doing, this alone is going to amount to millions and millions of pounds just in Cornwall.
There is no way Gov't will have the firepower to deal with this, imagine how much less gst is coming in just from Tourism, let alone all the businesses who have just had incomes drop to Zero, gov't revenue has to collapse by a country mile or perhaps two. Rates are not going to get paid nor will rents, it's not possible if you have no income.
Agreed. The wage subsidy for 12 weeks is a poor replacement for literally nothing coming in at the top. Backroom staff can be kept busy with month-end/year-end tidy-ups, but only for so long. The lack of clarity around commercial rent for tenants and landlords is mind-bending. Plus lockdown was called after 20th creditor payments went out and wiped out March Madness for many, before a big hit 1st April regular payments. Literally the most vulnerable part of the cashflow cycle for many.
They have absolutely no experience in private run companies, their lack of experience is about to show. Any shovel ready big projects to bounce economy will be 12-18 months away, too late for many. I think they know they under estimated the economic hit a full blown shutdown would have.
Yup. I suspect most companies have just had to close the doors in what was probably one of their best trading months outside Field Days. There is no rainy day fund big enough for "Someone yanking the handbrake on literally everything everywhere at three day's notice". For many, March would have been the month they traditionally load up on cash reserves to be rationed throughout until June. I'm just blown away by people thinking $585pp pw is enough to bridge that sort of gap in a period of total uncertainty, especially given that it binds you to the staff that you nominate when you apply for the subsidy.
JA and GR are absolutely lying to NZ they will cover wages...they not interested in big business, it's going be a bloody mess. It's unbelievable. You watch the next five, six weeks the announcements of closures and redundancy. I really fear what our youngest have got to look forward too.
FCM where have you been this last decade?
This has long been foretold. Maybe no the trigger, but with certainty the event.
On a planet 5-6 billion overpopulated, being drawn-down to the point that we are heating the place (due to old-fashioned physics being overridden by arrogance and ignorance in tandem) and what did you expect for them?
More bank-held digits? Sorry, but I think you have backed the wrong horse.
FCM saying it isn't wise to borrow money to cover fixed costs is quite logical from a conventional business point of view, and in such context it is right to criticise govt. A death knell as you points out. It just needs to be expanded from a single business to include the way the nation is run, and then further to include the planet.
housing and hospitals are two of the main things we need built, they should be planning those now to get up and running when we start up again
pity we dont have the MOW any more, they had projects sitting waiting to go waiting on funding back in the day,
we had the machines and a workforce that could be expanded when needed for big projects.
That's interesting but I'm not sure I get it. Why would any company borrow to pay people to sit around? There are other state packages available for staff. Trim the fixed costs to the bone and wait it out, as best as you can.
I agree, if they don't pay wages it's all over.
I wonder if they will pull the pin on the Waimea dam? If I was a ratepayer I would be demanding it.
https://waimeawater.nz/2020/03/26/coronavirus-work-stops-on-site-of-wai…
There were three Government bond tenders today and the heavy hand of the RBNZ was in them all.
Indeed:
Interpolated IR swap spreads trade at -27.07 bps and -55.5 bps respectively below the accepted tender yields for the 29s and 37s.
Are insurance companies and ACC involved in the OTC IR market to recover the blow out in future discounted present value costs of future liabilities? Whatever, I am sure banks are also big receivers of fixed as well.
This $585/week. I was initially told it was not to be taxed. So we informed the staff they were getting $585. Payday today and the accounting staff tell me the govt changed their minds and decided to make it taxable. I was floored. Even the child support is still coming out.
If this is how they run this subsidy how the hell are they running the MOH. I think Grant and Jacinda looked in shock over the magazine demise.
Then there is the butcher shop fiasco. I cant kill local trade now as the butchers are out of business.
Good luck with feeding all the cattle and sheep through winter NZ.
In the meantime no strict quarantine of incoming people. Yet everyday Bloomfield proudly tells us most of the positive cases come from overseas.
I think our pollies are in for some very negative feedback as time goes on.
From day one it was always been a Gross subsidy? There was no change of mind...did you read the fact sheet....or just assume? Need to review your staff as incompent at best. Did you not bother to check with your accountant as well? Reminds me that some people play the I didnt know line when it suits them. I will let you get back to your Women's weekly.
Yes well they can be a bit of a mish mash at times. But I tried elsewhere three times. And got screwed over each time. First guy was full of bluster and charged me an arm and a leg. Second lot was going bust and charged me way over the quote, to make up for all the businesses that were going bust in 2009. Third was just plain useless, worse than useless. He did the accounts and didnt include depreciation.... I couldnt believe my eyes....and once again charged like a wounded bull. Sometimes its the devil you know.
It is unfortunate that we have a complete liar as our prime minister. When asked about testing (COVID 19 that is), she lied to the nation face that it has been the front line doctors who refused access and it was by no way MOH leaded action. Over the past 3 years, she has hardly ever answered a question in an honest and straightforward fashion. From what happened in Labour party to now. And the quality of NZ media to challenge her is really poor, no challenge whatsoever. No one even asked if you are leading testing regime, did you mean doctors to do local testing? yet took no actions when they failed to do so? did you ask why? they made as massive a mess as the USA, Italy and Spain. The difference is that NZ is a remote country at end of the world and to mishandle everything as they did is even more astonishing (and US is being ran by a total clown of a man)
I know Simon and National are terrible, and JK was at least as bad as JA in handling the truth. However, we have JA in power and it is really sad that we have an entire bunch of liars to select from as our leaders.
It's easy to be critical of the Government; any Government in this situation.
They really had one of 3 options:
(1) Do nothing - and hope the virus passed through 'normally'. like Swine Flu did 10 years ago. 20,000 dead, and it moved on. The unknown risk was, and still is, that 50,000,000+ would die. That would damage any and all economies for far longer than any painful lockdown
(2) Shut up shop - what NZ has tried to do. It's not perfect and has awful consequences at all levels, but, hopefully it will be short and sharp and we can get on with the internal business of rebuilding our economy, in a different form, again soon or
(3) Half/Half - the USA, and to some extent Australia . That is probably going to be the worst of all alternative and will drag it out for them, and all of us, for years(?).
No Government was prepared for this. Ebola, somewhere 'over there' was as close as we thought it would come to us. Perhaps AIDS, closer to home. Our 'protection' was modern technology to prevent the Spanish Flu of 1918 revisiting us again. We now know that was a false reliance.
There is no 'right answer' and we will all have to deal with whatever course our Governments have decided on for us as countries.
Like as not, it could all fail no matter what we do. Frightening but possible. then the worst of Option (1) comes to us regardless of what we have done, and it then won't matter what our Government did anyway.
And 'why' weren't governments prepared for this? Several countries in Asia were, because of SARS.
As Taleb says this was NOT a black swan. It was a WHITE swan.
A well known Kiwi virologist (can't remember his name) based in the states said this too.
It's because the neo-liberal west has put off investment in public infrastructure with a 'just in time' approach (no contingency or 'fat' in the system). Proper (not tokenistic) strategic planning went out the window as 'we' embraced neo-liberalism.
Probably. But as I suggested, we relied on technology to protect us. And as far as Asian countries being prepared for this? Which ones, that have avoided infection? Fighting this mess is a bit like designing a tax system - if there was a correct way of doing it, everyone would be doing it the same way!
No they haven't avoided, but they have quite effectively mitigated.
And they have the resources, infrastructure and equipment in place. We don't, or at least not as we should.
Again, this isn't a Black Swan, but we seem to be rushing around as if we are at best semi-prepared for it.
I have laid off them since they finally decided to do the level 4 thing and sat tight and watched. But now I think the wheels are coming off. Suddenly Ardern starts saying test test test. Excuse me....the scientists have been at them to test test test for weeks. Then the blame got moved onto their experts. As useless as the WHO have been, they could not have said it louder. Test test test.
Then the cover up for the weekend when testing numbers fell off a cliff. Suddenly Bloomfield is quoting daily averages.
I have lost confidence in them.
As I've said, I was against this lockdown. But having done it, it needs to be done properly. So why the heck are we not quarantining people coming into the country? If we are going to do a lockdown, it needs to be done with really serous intent.
We are incurring all the costs of a full lockdown, but not as many of the benefits as we should be.....
It was a no-win situation for them.
Should they have closed the borders/gone to Level 4 after 1 person came down with the infection here; when there were no reported cases in the USA and few in the UK?
Knowing what we know now - of course!
But what if that 1 person had gotten to just 10, and 4 weeks of Level 4 was seen to be a total waste of the economy?
I believe they set and arbitrary number (100?) to make the move, but whatever they decided to do, there was and still is no way of knowing at this stage if 'it's all been worth it'. All they can do is do what they think is right; see how it goes and adjust the settings as needed.
Oh come on it was always going to get here. Mid february it was as obvious as hell. Jeez I have been stocking up since late January. Selling cattle as fast as I could.
Yet the Diamond Princess in February showed everybody what it could do. We had cruise ships here in mid march. The Ruby Princess got to Aussie around the 17th of March from nz, 400 are now ill from that cruise. And thats just counting the aussie cases.
The Diamond Princess was the warning shot on the cruise tourists. It was ignored.
There is a story: a man was given the opportunity to chose his punishment between being caned and eating a whole very hot chili pepper. He selected the pepper, and after eating half of it with great pain and agony, asked to be caned instead. That is what happened to NZ.
They are spending billions of dollars now to offset the impact of the lock down. They could have spend 10% of that to monitor all the incoming passengers from the get go and reduce the level of incoming travelers to a manageable level. Isolating them for at least 7 days and testing them before they go. They did not do that. They ended up closing down everything. Now they have half eaten their chili and screaming for the cane
Wow, our Minister of Health setting a 'really' good example...what a moron.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12322103
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