A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; many retail rate cuts, awful PMIs, house sales slow to trickle, jobless numbers jump, swaps stable, NZD unchanged, & more

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
BNZ rounded out the main bank home loan cuts. More here. NBS did so too.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
BNZ also cut most of its TD rates. Rabobank did so as well.

NOTHING BUT AWFUL
April’s factory PMI was never going to be anything but awful. And so it was. With various lockdown rules in place through the month, the index fell to its lowest ever level at 26 (50 is neither expansion nor contraction). This is less than half its 53 expansion norm and materially below the previous low of 36 recorded in November 2008 during the GFC. (For perspective, Australia's factory PMI in April was 44, and the US's was 36. Our almost complete shutdown tells the tale.)

VOLUMES SCARCE, PRICES WEAK
House sales slowed to trickle in April, down -80%, and median prices were also weaker in most regions, the REINZ reported.

ALMOST FREE MONEY
Investors (including the RBNZ?) got out their cheque books for the three NZGB bonds tendered today. $1.05 bln was on offer and bids totaling $2.8 bln were received. The April 2023 bond ($500 mln) was won at a 0.08% pa interest rate, the April 2029 bond ($350 mln) was won at a 0.53% interest rate, and the April 2037 bond ($200 mln) was won at 0.98% pa yield. For the April 2023 issue you have to assume the main bidder was the RBNZ, but in the end there were 11 successful winning bids.

THE CHANGING FACE OF THE JOBLESS
There are many more - and new - people on our unemployment benefit, called JobSeeker Support here. MSD has been looking at where this surge has been coming from. Here are some highlights: 38,960 of new job seekers applied during the lockdown. 46% had little or no previous benefit history. compared to 26% last year. They were higher earners – those earning $585 a week or more outstripped those earning less or with no previous income. 4,718 were New Zealanders returning home as the virus swept the globe, compared to 424 last year – that’s a 10-fold yearly increase. 65% were NZ European, Other, or unspecified ethnic groups, compared to 48% last year. 45% were in their 20s, compared to 37% last year.

THE DOLE AND SUBSIDIES
As at April 3, $5.36 bln in wage subsidies were paid out to 876,218 people (747,315 employees and 128,902 self-employed). The average is $6,120 per person claimed. Given that there were 2,666,600 people employed at March 31, that means a third of all people in the workforce are on this subsidy. And in addition, 186,826 people are now receiving JobSeeker support which is 6.7% of the labour force. As at March, there were 124,000 people unemployed, so that is a jump in the jobless ranks of +60,000 during April.

LOCAL UPDATE
One additional case today in the Auckland Marist cluster. There are now 1498 Covid-19 cases identified as either confirmed or probable. Twenty-one people have died (unchanged). There are still only two people left in hospital with the disease (unchanged), and neither are in ICU. Our recovery rate is now just under 95% with 77 people known to be still infected (-9) and 62 of those are in 9 clusters. That means just 15 other cases are recovering in self isolation in the community (-3 from yesterday).

AUSTRALIA UPDATE
In Australia, there are now 6989 cases (+14 since yesterday), 98 deaths (unchanged) and an unchanged recovery rate of just on 90%. 50 people are in hospital there (+1) with 18 in ICU (+1). There are now 688 active cases in Australia (-16).

GLOBAL UPDATE
The latest compilation of Covid-19 data is here. The global tally is now 4,441,600 and up +96,000 from this time yesterday, which is a rising level of growth. Now, just on 32% of all cases globally are in the US, which is up +27,000 since this time yesterday taking the total to 1,417,500 and the only country to exceed 1 mln cases. This is also a rising level of increase. US deaths have reached 86,000. Global deaths exceed 302,000. Both Canada and Mexico are struggling with containment although not to the same extent as the US.

FALTERING RESTART I
In China, retail sales in April were unexpectedly weak. There were down -7.5% in April when markets were expecting a lesser year-on-year fall and a larger recovery from March to April of +6.5% for the month. Chinese electricity generation and overall industrial production did rebound in April however. But the recovery probably isn't enough for Beijing, so markets are expecting more stimulus. But it could just be more debt stimulus.

FALTERING RESTART II
In Australia, major building and infrastructure supplier Boral is instituting shift reductions and temporary plant closures "to align production with current and expected lower levels of activity".

EQUITIES UPDATES
The S&P500 rose steadily during today's session on Wall Street to be up +1.2%. That means it is heading for a weekly -2.7% fall with one day to go. Frankfurt is down -5.2% heading into their Friday session, the FTSE100 is down -3.3% on the same basis, and the Paris CAC40 is down -6.0%. In Friday trading so far today, Shanghai is heading for a weekly -1.0% fall, Hong Kong is heading for a -3.8% fall, while Tokyo is looking at a -1.6% decline. Locally, the ASX200 looks like it will end unchanged while the NZX50 Capital Index might scrape in a +0.2% weekly rise.

SWAP RATES UPDATE
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. But yesterday, we recorded minor rises. The 90-day bank bill rate is down -1 bp to 0.27%. The Aussie Govt 10yr is up +1 bp to 0.91%. The China Govt 10yr is unchanged at 2.70%. The NZ Govt 10 yr yield is still rising, up another +4 bps to 0.65%. The UST 10yr is little-changed today at 0.63%.

NZ DOLLAR UNCHANGED
The Kiwi dollar is stable today, still at about 60 USc. Against the Aussie we are marginally lower at 92.8 AUc. Against the euro we are little-changed at 55.5 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is still at 66.

BITCOIN FIRMER AGAIN
The price of Bitcoin is firmer at US$9,517 and up another +2.1% 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 ».