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A review of things you need to know before you go home on Monday; a few retail rate changes; Auckland housing data error fixed, dry returns, swaps rise at long end, NZD firmer, & more

A review of things you need to know before you go home on Monday; a few retail rate changes; Auckland housing data error fixed, dry returns, swaps rise at long end, NZD firmer, & 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 its one year home loan 'special' rate to 2.29%, matching most of its rivals.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
ANZ has cut its Serious Saver account -5 bps so that the top potential rate is now just 0.20%. Heartland Bank has cut it Direct Call account by -25 bps to 0.50% pa. It has cut other savings rates as well. SBS Bank has trimmed is term deposit rate card.

AUCKLAND DATA FIXED
More than a 1000 new homes a month were built in Auckland in the year to November and the numbers are rising. Construction of new homes there is getting closer to keeping up with population growth. Our new report fixes data problems from Auckland Council that were significantly overstating completions data in the past and meant that Auckland Council policy makers were responding to incorrect and vastly optimistic data.

CAUSE FOR CONCERN
Check the soil moisture charts below. The North Island is drying out fast. Auckland water storage is currently at 63% and slipping. Significant rainfall is unlikely over the nexy nine weeks or so.

MORE JOBS
In Australia, job ads rose for an eight consecutive month in January, although the pace of the gains slowed.

RUNNING HOT
And Australian home lending is running very hot. It reached a record high in December with AU$26 bln committed, up more than +8% above November and a massive +31% higher than December 2019. (Data releases for New Zealand are temporarily suspended due to the RBNZ data system breach, but is likely that New Zealand home lending ran equally as hot in January.)

EXPANDING FASTER I
Aussie factory PMIs were positive too with the local version expanding at a healthier clip, while the internationally-benchmarked one reports an even faster expansion with new order inflows at a 4 year high.

EXPANDING FASTER II
PMI reports for Taiwan, South Korea and Indonesia all reported fast expanding factory sectors and all very impressive for January. But it wasn't so impressive at all for Japan, Malaysia or Thailand, although Japan is no longer contracting.

EXPANDING SLOWER
In China, the latest PMI survey, the private sector one, points to a sharply slowing factory sector. Operating conditions there improved at slowest rate for seven months. Export orders contracted. This private sector report fell to the same weak level that the official factory PMI reported.

TRADE UP
And South Korea reported sharply higher trade activity for both exports and imports.

GOLD PRICE UP
Gold is trading in Australia, and soon in Asian markets. So far today it is up +US$6 from this time Saturday to US$1853.

EQUITIES UPDATES
The NZX50 Capital Index is down -0.7% in late trade today. The ASX200 is flat in early afternoon trade. At its opening, Shanghai is down -0.6%, Hong Kong is up +0.6%, and Tokyo is up +0.9%. The S&P500 futures index is down -0.3% (which is much less than the earlier indications). Both Google and Amazon are due to report calendar Q4 results in the coming week.

SWAP & BOND RATES FIRMER
We don't have today's swap rate movements yet. If there are material changes when the end-of-day swap rates are available today, we will update them here. The 90 day bank bill rate is unchanged at 0.29%. The Australian Govt ten year benchmark rate is up +2 bps at 1.11%. The China Govt ten year bond is also firmer, down -2 bps at 3.19%. And the New Zealand Govt ten year is up by +4 bps at 1.17% and above where the earlier RBNZ fix was, at 1.15% (up +5 bps). The US Govt ten year is back up +2 bps at 1.08%.

NZD FIRM
The Kiwi dollar is now at 71.9 and firmer than this time Saturday. On the cross rates we are also much firmer against the Aussie at 94.1 AUc. Against the euro we are a tad higher at 59.3 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 is up to 73.5.

BITCOIN SLIPS
The bitcoin price has slipped today and is now at US$32,430 after starting the day at US$32,802.

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

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40 Comments

The silver action is under way.

Silver prices leapt to a five-month high on Monday and small silver miners listed in Australia surged after social media calls to buy the metal and emulate the frenzy that has driven GameStop shares up 1,500% in two weeks.

Spot silver rose as much as 7.4% to $28.99 an ounce, the highest since mid-August. Shares in a handful of mining firms such as Argent Minerals, Boab Metals and Investigator Resources leapt more than 15%.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-trading-silver-idUSKBN2A00WG

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"Due to the manipulation and collusion of citadel, hedge funds, and brokers to change the rules and rig the game in their favor. Who likely knew ahead of time and bought puts right before and calls at the bottom, GME is too important to abandon still. SLV is still my next plat but GME needs to go to $1000 and these people need to go to jail....Buy SLV shares and SLV call options to force physical delivery of silver to the SLV vaults."

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Price action in Asia is going nuts on silver miners. One wonders if this is going to go global. JP Morgan people probably working all weekend.

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JP Morgan are one of the biggest owners/holders of silver in America. Silver miners are corrupt FA, investors in silver mining stocks better hope the price of silver stays high.

If you're running with the hounds you can't piss like a puppy.

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JPM is the largest owner of silver on the planet.

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Since 2008, I thought global individual investors/hoarders own that ranking.

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prolly one of the reasons they are targeting silver

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Silver bullets kill vampire squids

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GME needs to go to $1000 and these people need to go to jail..
This Is The Stunning Way Some Desperate Funds Covered Their Gamestop Shorts

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The physical product sold out, on order, or otherwise hard to come by.

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If you don’t hold it you don’t own it, silver supply is finite. This will be a lot harder to keep a lid on than share shorts.

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ANZ has cut its Serious Saver account -5 bps so that the top potential rate is now just 0.20%

A $5,000,000 deposit to save $10,000 annually - a signature example of how to part the masses from the capacity to gather capital to meet expenses and save for assets.

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Audaxes , you beat me to it. Should it be called a savings account.
From ANZ, "Get rewarded with Premium interest and grow your savings faster " and
"Great if you're saving for your future, or have a special goal in mind" What future goal... a house perhaps.

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I've alteady started searching for an investment property as my TD's expire in early April. The Reserve Bank no longer want savers.

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You are likely too late. We were. The horse has bolted and is halfway to Tirau.

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Edward
As long as you propose longer term, a bit of work and management and the yield makes sense, investment property still makes sense.
The comment the horse has bolted is irrelevant. Short term (1 to 5 years) fluctuations including corrections irrelevant - given entrenched shortage of both rental properties and houses rent will most likely remain as same if not increasing so yield consistent on initial investment with possibility of longer term capital gain.
Current low interest rates mean property yields are attractive. It isn’t short term property market fluctuations that are important but rather mortgage interest fluctuations and one needs to be prudent.
Rex Pat’s comment is based on faulted simplistic reasoning - dominated by short term market fluctuations only.

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...and China built another 275 MW coal power plant today, planned another 420MW - and got the champagne bottle ready for the same again tomorrow.

To get to carbon zero the US needs to shut down two power plants per day, using net zero carbon to do so, until ~2035.

https://energyandcleanair.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/A-New-Coal-…

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=65&t=2#:~:text=As%20of%20Dece…

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Silver seems popular - could be the next momentum trade. I'll be interested to see how (SLV) iShares Silver Trust Stock is trading tomorrow.

Current Short Float - Perf Quarter 14.74%. I'd say there will be some long positions taken at the beginning/[before] trading starts.

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You'll be in the Hunt, then?

Worked out well for them.

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The Hunt bros didn't have the internet or the power of the crowd. The scale of naked shorts now is on a whole new level.

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I wish them luck but silver is a much larger and more liquid market.

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Silver is not being pumped by retail. Main street is pushing it through MSM. The 6 largest holders of silver are the American banks and their associated cronies. Yea lets pump their shit silver bags...

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“Increasing Māori representation is essential to ensuring equity in representation and to provide a Māori voice in local decision making,” Mahuta said.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/government-aims-overturn-un…
Equity in representation - should it apply to Asian / European / Pacific Island; male / female; age grouping and if not why not?

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it does apply to them, they are the people, every person gets the same vote and the same voice in all things, that is democracy. Creating specialist groups greater in size than the individual people to force an opinion one way is not democracy

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I’d say it’s a bit different when they are indigenous and we out numbered them and now we have all the say.

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Indigenous = originating or occurring naturally in a particular place. According to their legends they originated elsewhere. Can't fifth generation Kiwis of Scottish origin claim to be 'occur naturally in NZ'. Would you apply similar idea of having separate electorates for Northern Irish Catholics? I think my deep unease with the concept of only Maori being able to represent Maori is the concept that we cannot ever break down the barriers between us, in other words racism is inate and never to be overcome (a concept that buggers my mixed marriage) and no rational moral thought can ever overcome it. The good samaritan can help an infinite number of Jews but never be allowed to represent them on their local council.
Our parliament is not representative, it is not a level playing field: too many Maori and not enough Asians so if we need special electorates for Maori to 'level the playing field' in local govt then shouldn't we cap the number of Maori in the Beehive and bring in more Chinese and Indians?

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Not in NZ, those peoples have their own countries where they have indigenous rights. For NZ those rights belong to Maori.

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So these Maori councillors will only vote on issues related to their indigenous rights. If so I'm in favour. They can take over Auckland council's art gallery and museums for example. If someone I cannot vote for decides to change the T3 lane to the city then I will be mad.

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That is already the case: Auckland Transport are not elected.

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That is absolute rubbish. In a democracy this is not about ethnicity. Children born here are equally New Zealanders no matter their ethnicity, sex or whatever.

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NZ citizenship by birth in NZ ended in 2006. Being a NZer (i.e. citizenship) doesn't make you Maori.

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Opportunity for representation should be equal for everyone. No picking winners. We are on a seriously slippery slope towards polarising our people.

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Electric vehicles & solar power stock performance fits historical profile of a bubble, JPM says. Taking historical examples of Nikkei in 1989, Nasdaq in 2000, commodities in 2008 – assets tend to quadruple (~300% return) in a period of ~3yrs. EV stocks increased 10fold, Solar 5*! Link

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Given that weather forecasts 3 days out are only about 50% accurate (depending on how you define accuracy for them...) how can someone be sure that "significant" rain is unlikely in 9 weeks? I'd like to take that bet!

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I guess being summer and all.

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I get that, but care to wager that we don't get "significant" rain by mid April?

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Will reopening New Zealands border give a new tailwind to house prices?

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maybe GJ Gardner will do house + land + resident visa packages??

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No doubt your local liquor shop does job, room and resident packages, with advice on how to sell your own "assisted residency packages" thrown in for free.

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Of course it will, the skills shortage system is as much about importing capital accumulated and taxed elsewhere as it is about suppressing lower and middle-class/professional wages. I'd love to see the PM asked if she plans on returning to 70,000+ arrivals per annum - her ministries apparently do.

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