A review of things you need to know before you go home on Thursday; retail rate cuts signaled, crisis Budget unveiled, job ads plummet, migration rises, swaps hold, NZD recovers, & more

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
HSBC cut its key fixed rates. More here.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
None to report today here, but this update may be useful. Update: Heartland Bank have announced reductions for terms 1 year and shorter.

THE CRISIS BUDGET
Budget-2020 adds an additional $16 bln in spending to the $26 bln announced for the COVID-19 response. Together, this support represents about 15% of 2019 GDP. Full details here. Treasury forecasts a -$28 bln full-year deficit and a $60 bln bond issuance program to help pay for it all. Interestingly, this Budget had virtually nothing to say about taxes. But it did rather surprisingly and quietly boost Defense spending by almost +$2 bln, an almost +40% jump.

JOB ADS PLUMMET
BNZ/Seek report: "Like the bulk of New Zealand’s economic indicators for April, job advertising fell dramatically. This was, of course, the month most impacted by the nation’s maximum-level economic and social lockdown. This level 4 lasted from 26 March to 27 April, after which level 3 came back into play. The 65% drop in job advertising in April, followed a 27% fall in March, making for an annual rate of decline of 75%."

SLOWER POUR
March quarter data brought some rather large falls in the volumes of ready-mixed concrete being poured in projects around the country. They were down -5% year on year overall, but level in Christchurch, up +5% in Wellington, but down -8% in Auckland. These changes reflected a slipping construction pipeline before the pandemic shutdown and that uncertainty may get addressed in today's Budget commitments.

RUSH HOME
The March net migration gain more was than double what it was in March last year as kiwis came home to roost during the pandemic.

A POST CRISIS RETHINK?
Updated data from Auckland Transport shows that public transport ridership dived by a third in March from the same month a year ago, and evaporated by -98% in April. With buses now limited to just 15 passengers in L2, it is hard to see it coming back fast in May. In fact the who issue for public transport is that riders will quickly realise that private cars are much safer in a pandemic; worse, that crowded trains, ferries and buses are quite unsafe when there is a virus threat. You do wonder if work is going on at public transport agencies to reimagine their future because it is unlikely to be anything like the past. Cars and road infrastructure has clearly demonstrated a much better ability to adapt, it seems.

INDEPENDENT DIRECTOR QUITS ASB BOARD
ASB says independent director Susan Peterson has resigned from its board, effective June 30. Peterson, also an independent director of Xero and Trustpower, will have served three years on the bank's board.

LOCAL UPDATE
Another zero day today. There are still 1497 Covid-19 cases identified in New Zealand. Twenty-one people have died (unchanged). There are still only two people left in hospital with the disease (unchanged), and none are in ICU. Our recovery rate is now just over 94% with 86 people known to be infected (-9) and 68 of those are in 12 clusters. That means 18 other cases are recovering in self isolation in the community (-4 from yesterday).

AUSTRALIA UPDATE
In Australia, there are now 6975 cases (+9 since yesterday), 98 deaths (+1) and an unchanged recovery rate of just under 90%. 50 people are in hospital there (+3) with 17 in ICU (+1). There are now 704 active cases in Australia (-31).

GLOBAL UPDATE
The latest compilation of Covid-19 data is here. The global tally is now 4,345,600 and up +86,000 from this time yesterday, which is an unchanged level of growth. Now, just on 32% of all cases globally are in the US, which is up +21,000 since this time yesterday taking the total to 1,390,400 and the only country to exceed 1 mln cases. This is also an unchanged level of increase. US deaths have reached 84,000. Global deaths exceed 297,000. Both Canada and Mexico are struggling with containment although not to the same extent as the US.

OUT OF WORK
Things aren't happy employment-wise in Australia. Their unemployment rate jumped to 6.3% in April, with 580,000 jobs lost during the month and a net -400,000 few jobs in April that the same month a year ago. It was the biggest monthly fall in employment since records started being kept in 1978. It the same year, their labour force actually shrank as their participation rate slumped to just 63.7% as the crisis discouraged hundreds of thousands of people of employment age. Of those wanting work, there are now 832,000 people looking for full or part-time work.

TIME TO QUIT
And a market analyst is reporting that rising vacancies and falling rents in Australia's residential housing markets is seeing a sharp increase in property investors wanting to sell out of the market.

GOT THERE, BUT ...
Sharemarket darling Xero achieved its first full year of net profitability in the year to March 2020, but is unable to say how badly the pandemic will hit its 2021 result.

EQUITIES FALLING GLOBALLY
The world's equity markets are being sold off everywhere today. It started in Europe where most markets shed about -2.5% overnight. Wall Street was little different, with the S&P500 down -1.9% today. Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo have all opened much lower. And the ASX200 is down -0.9% so far, with the NZX50 Capital Index down -0.2% near the close and that probably represents the 'best' of any market globally.

SWAP RATES UPDATE
Post Budget, wholesale swap rates rose marginally, up +1 bp for one and five years, and up +3 bps for ten years. But you have to see that in the perspective of yesterday's hard falls when the two year was down -7 bps, the five year down -10 bps and the ten year down -13 bps. We don't have wholesale swap rates movement details today yet. We will update this later in the day if they show a significant movement. The 90-day bank bill rate is up +2 bps at 0.28%. The Aussie Govt 10yr is down -2 bps to 0.90%. The China Govt 10yr is up +4 bps at 2.70%. The NZ Govt 10 yr yield is on the move sharply up and when we wrote this was up +9 bps to 0.61% and erasing all of yesterday's fall. The UST 10yr has slipped another -2 bps today to 0.64%.

NZ DOLLAR HAS NO NET CHANGE
The Kiwi dollar is stable today, still at about 60 USc. It fell before the Budget announcement and rose after it was presented. Against the Aussie we back up to where were this time yesterday at 93 AUc. Against the euro we are also little-changed on a net basis at 55.4 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is still at 66.

BITCOIN FIRMER
The price of Bitcoin is firmer at US$9,325 and up another strong +4.6% from this time on yesterday. 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 ».