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A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; both mortgage and TD rate cuts, property development underwrites, US warns on travel to NZ, swaps unchanged, NZD firms, & more

A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; both mortgage and TD rate cuts, property development underwrites, US warns on travel to NZ, swaps unchanged, NZD firms, & more
ID 22702269 © Daniaphoto | Dreamstime.com

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
SBS Bank has cut fixed rates for 1 and 2 year, to 2.55% and 2.75% respectively

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
BNZ have cut TD rates with the core rate now of 1.40% for 6 mths and longer, making them the lowest offerer at present. (They do have a 18 mth 1.60% 'special'.) The NZCU Baywide group have also cut rates again today. SBS Bank has cut TD rates.

NEW UNDERWRITE
The Government said they will underwrite and invest in 'stalled or at-risk' residential property developments amid fears of coming credit crunch. This will cover up to 4000 properties and is on top if KiwiBuild.

SUCCESSFUL DEBT RAISING
Wellington Airport successfully raised its target $100 mln in its bond offer, at an interest rate of 2.10%. This debt is rated BBB and with a negative outlook.

MORE UNEMPLOYED
Joblessness could rise to more than 10% if the virus pushes other states outside Victoria into Stage 3 and 4 lockdowns the Reserve Bank of Australia has forecast in their latest Monetary Policy Statement. And they warn it will take a long time to recover, pushing them into an extended recession.

AUSSIE BACKFLIP
In response the Australian Government has backflipped on their recently announced tougher eligibility rules so more companies can qualify for the payment, which drops to AU$600 a week from September from AU$750 now. After this reversal means their 'JobKeeper' program will cost more than AU$100 bln in this budget year, up from AU$85 bln.

DYSTOPIAN WASHINGTON
In a laughable move, the US Government has issued a new warning to its citizens about traveling to New Zealand "due to COVID-19". The US has reported 3.8 mln new community transfer cases in the past 90 days and a death rate of 492/mln. New Zealand has reported zero community transfer cases in the same time, and has an overall death rate of 4/mln, and zero in the past 90 days.

GOLD UPDATE
The gold price in the afternoon London fix was US$2067/oz, then slipped slightly in New York to US$2063/oz. In Asian trading it is back up to US$2068/oz and at one point actually got as high as US$2078/oz. The silver price is up by more than +7%.

EQUITY UPDATES
Earlier, the S&P500 ended up +0.6% in New York. In early trade Shanghai is down -1.1% (and heading for a +1.4% gain for the week), Hong Kong is down -1.6% today and Tokyo is down -0.6%. The ASX200 is also down -0.6% in early afternoon trade and heading for a weekly +1.3% gain). The NZX50 Capital Index is down -0.8% in late trade heading for a weekly loss of -0.4%.

SWAP RATES UPDATE
Swap rates were probably little-changed again 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 down -3 bps at 0.83%. The China Govt 10yr is slightly firmer at 3.00% and up +2 bps. And the NZ Govt 10yr yield has held on to most of yesterday's big gain and is now at 0.77%. The UST 10yr has dipped -2 bps to 0.52% today.

NZ DOLLAR FIRMS
The Kiwi dollar has held its overnight rise to be still at 66.8 USc. And against the Aussie we are firmer to 92.5 AUc. Against the euro we are +½c stronger at 56.4 euro cents. And that means the TWI-5 is firmer at 69.8.

BITCOIN STAYS FIRM
The price of bitcoin is up again, now at US$11,899 and a +2.0% rise in a day. 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

Select chart tabs

Daily benchmark rate
Source: RBNZ
Daily benchmark rate
Source: RBNZ
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Source: RBNZ
End of day UTC
Source: CoinDesk

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22 Comments

Gold and silver prices have fallen from the overnight hysteria and miners are largely in the red. That's a good thing in my opinion.

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To keep it trucking upwards it needs to have it's consolidation before heading upwards again.

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Personally I would like to see a massive shakeout. The 'it all goes up so jump on the bandwagon' psychology has never belonged in the PM space. It belongs in residential property and equity markets across the Anglosphere.

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It's a new day and age out there played by a young instant reward generation. That is only set to esulate and gain pace untill they find a new shiny object to pump and dump.

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I prefer to osculate.

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.

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Thats a bit precious (intended pun).

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"Long covid' - it's becoming clearer that significant numbers of patients suffer long lasting effects post infection.......this from the British Medical Journal.....

''There will be a significant influx of patients with lingering ‘long covid’ illness, both physical and emotional, and GPs must have the necessary resources and support to care for patients and help them come to terms with and readjust to the aftermath.”

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2815

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"Two men say their Jesus, one of em must be wrong" (Dire Straits)
Gold record highs (for fear and bad economy)
Share markets near record highs (the economy is great, strong sound economic fundamentals.)

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"Warning lights are flashing down at Quality Control
......
Innocence is injured experience just talks
Everyone seeks damages and everyone agrees
That these are 'classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze"

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touche

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The travel warning may be specifically because we've got (covid-19 related) border restrictions that US travelers need to be aware of, rather than (the silly idea) that they'll be at increased risk of Covid-19.
The text of their general Covid-19 travel advisory shows a focus on governments putting in place quarantine and other restrictions.
I mean, it's nice to have a laugh, but it does make some sense that there would be a travel warning

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Travel warning.
You will not be allowed into NZ, do not bother trying to travel there..

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US travel warning to nz. High risk of being trampled to death by a herd of sheep.

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Flock of sheep

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Heard of chickens?

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Following , yesterdays M14 inflation expectation data, provided by a total of 39 wholly unbiased experts , from which a number of perennial housing bulls, confidently extrapolated the housing inflation forecasts, (one aspect of the data), as if their own, I decided to spend 10 minutes reviewing past forecasts, as suggested by albert2020. Looking at the average forecast (one year ahead- certainly not an excessively long period) 10 year government bond yields, over the past 25 years, not only are our expert forecasters, woefully lacking , often 70-75 bps adrift, they have for the past ten years almost entirely missed to the upside, where the actual yield has continued to fall to its new low levels. Needless to say , the RBNZ will need to be lowering the OCR within the next 12 months, to remain consistent.
Enclosed, is a template survey,for everyone
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/-/media/ReserveBank/Files/Statistics/Surveys/s…

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That survey is amusing and appalling at the same time.

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"In a laughable move, the US Government has issued a new warning to its citizens about traveling to New Zealand "due to COVID-19"

LOL. If anybody needed any further, final confirmation that most Americans (not all of them, of course) are stupid beyond hope, that was it.

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I wanna know what we have to do to get them to upgrade the level from 2 "Exercise increased caution" to 4 "Do not travel"!! (;-)

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Integrate Huawei into our 5G network, and say something negative about Israeli identity theft in Chch.

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Plus the real virus of our time... TikTok.

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