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A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; Auckland house sales recover, car sales recover, more shovel ready projects, NZSF buys back some assets, swaps and NZD stable, & more

A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; Auckland house sales recover, car sales recover, more shovel ready projects, NZSF buys back some assets, swaps and NZD stable, & more
ID 22702269 © Daniaphoto | Dreamstime.com

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes today.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
The Police Credit Union cut rates today. Rabobank also cut both TD and NoticeSaver rates.

AUCKLAND HOUSE SALES RECOVER
Barfoot & Thompson's July sales were more like the peak summer selling season than mid-winter, recovering to their best level for a July in five years. In fact, over the past 55 months, only five of them have exceeded July 2020.

CAR SALES RECOVER
"Revenge spending" after international travel is blocked, and cashed up returning Kiwis, keep the new car sales market growing in July especially for SUV models. Tradies return for their big utes as well

DELAYED GUIDANCE
As a result of discussions with its auditors, Audit New Zealand and the Office of the Auditor-General, Auckland Council "believes it is prudent" to delay the release of its financial results for the year ended 30 June 2020. The pandemic has given rise to a number of uncertainties which require management to apply significant judgement to the underlying assumptions and estimates within the financial statements.

BNZ INTRODUCES NEW PRICING FOR SME CONTACTLESS DEBIT TRANSACTIONS
BNZ says SME customers will now pay no more than 0.70% per contactless debit transaction. This comes with the waiving of these fees, since late March, ending. BNZ says customers can now choose split pricing, a fixed fee, or interchange plus pricing. Eftpos transactions remain free to all the bank's business customers. Retail NZ last year put weighted average merchant service fees at 1.1% for contactless debit transactions. This BNZ reduction follows Westpac's earlier announcement.

CLOSER INTEGRATION OF WESTLAND & OCEANIA DAIRY OPERATIONS
Toni Brendish is stepping down at the end of this week as the CEO of Westland Dairy. She will be replaced by Shiqing Jian, the top Yili manager in New Zealand who already heads Oceania Dairy. Yili now owns both.

A $263 MLN PRE-ELECTION SHOVEL READY SPURT
Another $188 mln is to be invested in seven infrastructure projects across Kāinga Ora developments in Auckland at Northcote, Roskill, Mangere, and Tāmaki; and $75 mln invested into the Auckland Unitec residential development project.

BUYING LOCAL
The NZ Super Fund, and the Ontario Teachers Pension Board, have acquired the New Zealand operations of Australian company Healthscope. Each has taken a 50% share. These New Zealand operations are the country's largest human and veterinary pathology network operating as Labtests Auckland, Northland Pathology, Taranaki Pathology Services, Southern Community Laboratories, Wellington SCL, Canterbury SCL, Medlab South & Gribbles Veterinary Pathology. They have 25 laboratories, over 2,000 staff and 150 collection centres throughout NZ. Its a deal worth more than $550 mln.

NEVER ENDING & GROWING TRADE SURPLUSES
Australia has recorded another huge monthly trade surplus. In July it posted an AU$8.2 bln surplus for the month, taking the 12 month total to AY$78 bln. This surplus has been expanding for a long time now. In the equivalent year to June 2019 it had a surplus of AY$49 bln, and that was vastly higher than the AU$7 bln surplus in the year prior to that. China may be grumpy with the Aussies, but it just keeps on buying.

EQUITY UPDATES
The S&P500 ended today up +0.7%. The NZX50 Capital Index is heading for a similar rise. The ASX200 is much firmer, up +1.7% so far. Meanwhile, Shanghai has just opened -0.3% lower although Hong Kong is up +0.6%. Tokyo has built on yesterday's stellar rise, up another +1.4%. But no markets today can match the overnight leap in Frankfurt of +2.7%.

SWAP RATES UPDATE
Swap rates were probably unchanged today. We don't have final wholesale swap rates movement details yet, but we will update this later in the day if they show a significant different movement. The 90-day bank bill rate is unchanged at 0.30%. The Aussie Govt 10yr is little-changed at 0.85%. The China Govt 10yr is softer at -2 bps at 2.97%. But the NZ Govt 10yr yield is unchanged at 0.74%. The UST 10yr has held at about 0.56% today.

NZ DOLLAR HOLDS
The Kiwi dollar has run softer today, now at 66.2 USc. And against the Aussie we are little-changed at 92.9 AUc. Against the euro we are also little-changed at 56.2 euro cents. And that means the TWI-5 is little-changed at 69.5.

BITCOIN STAYS FIRM
The price of bitcoin is also little-changed at US$11,273.. 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 ».

Daily exchange rates

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Source: CoinDesk

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18 Comments

.As a result of discussions with its auditors, Audit New Zealand and the Office of the Auditor-General, Auckland Council "believes it is prudent" to delay the release of its financial results for the year ended 30 June 2020.

Liquidity or solvency issues?

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Possibly impairments. A lot of nzx companies took the two month extension granted

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LGFA certainly stepping up in the duration stakes for smaller councils.LGFA confirms Issue Price, Interest Rate and Issuance Yield

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China may be grumpy with the Aussies, but it just keeps on buying.

Australia keeps on selling to China - no matter what grievances they have with China's behaviour.

China is too big to ignore

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And China keeps on buying, particularly iron ore. Sold Fortescue after a 'flash crash' last Aug/Sept. Might be up 120% now. Held it for 10 years for nothing.

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One of my old mates, Chris L, started Fortescue with Twiggy and the others after their disaster that was Anaconda Nickle. Exercised and sold his 10 cent options when the WA Government was taking a stake back in 2003(?) and thought he'd done well with an $800k profit. I shudder to think what those same shares would be worth today! (What's Twiggy worth today, 20 billion?)
It's all easy looking back.....

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"Barfoot & Thompson's July sales were more like the peak summer selling season than mid-winter, recovering to their best level for a July in five years. In fact, over the past 55 months, only five of them have exceeded July 2020."

Same old rubbish failing to analyze the actual data. How many duplicate sales and pre sales need to be included before Interest calls out this misreporting ?

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as mentioned in the other page comments. I've done the numbers for duplicates.
For July 2020 there was actually no repetition of July's sales compared to the Jan19-Jul20 period (was surprised, actually)

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More failure in Auckland quarantine operations.
# part-time Minister of Health.

The judge says:
He described the lack of any mental health assessment and additional care for those suffering from such issues in managed isolation as "a major failing".

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/422702/woman-given-suspended-senten…

# who is in charge here?

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If I was in charge HERE, trolling would be be gone.

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Sounds like a spill from this afternoons meeting$.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/422736/canterbury-west-coast-dhb-ch…

"The sorry result of this Board's failings is the loss of an effective DHB chief executive and a number of his team at a time when the health system can ill-afford to lose strong, experienced leadership," Dalton said.

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Great to see contactless payment prices starting to move.

Well done Interest.co.nz for your part in highlighting this cost over recent years.

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House sales UP
Car sales UP
SUV and UTE sales UP
Consumer credit UP
S&P 500 UP
NZX is UP
Kiwi$ is UP on last week
Trade surpluses are UP

Happy days are here again ................I wish I could believe it .

Or maybe I have been totally and hopelessly wrong in my Bearish pessimism

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In spite of all the negative press recently, the market is humming along. Imagine what it will be like when things turn positive. I can't wait

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Or maybe I have been totally and hopelessly wrong in my Bearish pessimism…..

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the line of dots at the end denote a pregnant pause full of rich meaning within which you are meant to find Yvil with a knowing smile and matching number plate

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https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3095935/china-positions…

After exporting the virus for free the CCP plans to benefit from the vaccine its presumably stolen from someone else's lab.

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