A review of things you need to know before you go home on Wednesday; no retail rate changes, businesses less unconfident, big factory and wholesale trade falls, swaps sink further, NZD weak, & more

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
None to report today.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
None here either.

APOLOGY
We have been battling website issues today. Nothing to do with DDoS attack, rather all internal. We are sorry for the interrupted service. :(

LESS UNCONFIDENT
ANZ’s preliminary September business confidence survey shows overall confidence became less negative, and ‘own activity’ confidence was also less negative as well. The survey suggests firms are looking through the second wave impacts. This data is better than expected. Still while most indicators are at their ‘highest’ (or least bad) since February, they all well below pre-COVID levels.

HEAVY DROP I
Statistics NZ today reported the largest fall in manufacturing sales ever for Q2-2020 (since their series began in 1994) with sales down -$3.1 bln compared to the June 2019 quarter. Volumes produced were down -12%, values were down -9.5%.

HEAVY DROP II
Wholesale trade sales fell -$2.7 bln or -10% in Q2-2020 compared with the same quarter a year ago. And that is the largest fall in the 25 years of this data too.

'ALL OVER THE ROAD'
ANZ's truckometer shows the Light Traffic Index (cars) fell -13.1% in August, while the Heavy Traffic Index (trucks) fell -6.5% as the impact of the second COVID-19 outbreak weighed, including the roadblocks around Auckland.

CRIMINALITY ALLEGED
The Financial Markets Authority has filed criminal charges against an individual in relation to the Forestlands group of companies (now being liquidated), for alleged disclosure and financial record keeping breaches.

NEW EXEMPTION
The Government is creating a new border exception category to enable the return of some temporary work visa holders who are overseas and have strong, ongoing links to New Zealand. Business groups are welcoming the change.

LOTS OF NEW PUBLIC DEBT, SMALLER ECONOMIES
Ratings agency Fitch says New Zealand's Govt debt to GDP ratio is on track to go from 27% in 2019 to 49% in 2022. Australia's is going from 42% to 61% of their GDP. (Japan's will end up at 261%.)

GLIMMER
In Australia, much is being made of consumer confidence “roaring back”. But actually, that is only in the perspective of the last six disastrous months. In fact, consumer sentiment remains very negative across the ditch according to the Westpac MI survey.

EQUITIES UPDATE
On Wall Street, the S&P500 ended the day down a very sharp -2.8%. The tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange was down -4.1% with Tesla taking one of the largest falls. At its opening today, Shanghai is down -1.6%, Hong Kong is down -1.1%, and Tokyo is reversing yesterday’s gains, down -1.6%. The ASX200 is down -2.5% in early afternoon trade, and the NZX50 Capital Index is down -1.3% in late trade today.

SWAP RATES LOW
Yesterday, local swap rates fell to new record lows for 2, 3 and 4 year tenors. The two year is down to a minuscule 0.0275% (or $2.65 annual interest for every $10,000). Longer rates were little-changed. We won’t have the final data for today yet and if it is significant we will update it here. The 90 day bank bill rate was unchanged at 0.30%. The Australian Govt ten year benchmark rate is 0.91% and down -5 bps. The China Govt ten year bond is at 3.14%, down -2 bps. The New Zealand Govt ten year is now at 0.57% down -7 bps and approaching the record low of 0.49%. The US Govt ten year is down -5 bps at 0.67%.

NZD DOWN
The Kiwi dollar has fallen from 66.9 USc yesterday to 66.2 USc now, a drop of more than half a cent. Against the Aussie we are at 91.7 AUc and little-changed. Against the euro we are at 56.2 euro cents, also little changed. That means our TWI-5 is now at 69.1 and the lowest in two weeks.

BITCOIN
Bitcoin has fallen further today, now at US$10,019 and down -3.5% from this time yesterday, of which -1.4% of the drop was from where we opened this morning.

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».