Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.
MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
ANZ has followed ASB and released a 'new build' floating rate. ANZ's is at 1.68%. It is only a small corner of home loans and will probably only apply to well less than 5% of their mortgage business. Good publicity though, as it has been for ASB, Heartland and Simplicity before them.
TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
None here today.
MORE CONFIDENT
The strong pricing outlook for New Zealand’s key agricultural products has driven a third consecutive lift in farmer confidence, the latest Rabobank Rural Confidence Survey of the year has found. The last time both general confidence, and own business confidence were both this positive in this survey was in March 2018.
FIRMING PRICES
Meat processor beef and lamb prices are now at 18 month highs. Prices for coarse wool are showing some signs of life too, now slightly less under-water than they have been.
LESS SELLING BUT DEMAND REMAINS STRONG
Winter is biting into Auckland house auction numbers but the sales rate is holding up. Barfoot & Thompson auction numbers are now half what they were over the peak summer months.
WARNING FOR FINFLUENCERS
The FMA is warning online bloggers and social media 'gurus' about keeping their conversations general in nature. It has released a guide to talking about money online following concerns some social media influencers and bloggers may be straying into regulated financial advice. Consumers are warned that recommendations for particular products for particular people should only be done by registered financial advisers. Influencers should approach paid, unpaid or gifted partnerships for financial services and products with caution. Think carefully before promoting a financial product or service. There are rules and guidelines around advertising financial products and services, including legal requirements.
UP HALF A BIL
Capitalisation for the NZX50 rose by +$556 mln last week, or +0.4%, to $127.1 bln. None of the 50 companies in this index changed their place on the list. Companies have been releasing their annual results and we have updated our profiles for Fisher & Paykel Healthcare (FPH #1), Infratil (IFT #8), Ryman Healthcare (RYM #9), and Goodman Property Trust (GMT #16).
RECOVERED LABOUR MARKET
Employment continued to pick up in May, with filled jobs up a further +0.4% for the month according to Stats NZ's May employment indicators. The number of jobs is now +0.6% above its pre-COVID peak. Westpac reports that since the pandemic shock, the strongest growth has been in the construction sector, with gains also seen in areas such as healthcare and IT. Sectors that have been more affected by the ongoing closure of the border, such as hospitality, transport and recreational services, are still down on pre-COVID levels. The overall demand for labour is strong at the moment, as demonstrated by the sharp rise in job advertisements in recent months. The monthly employment indicator, along with the decline in Jobseeker Benefit payments, suggests that those positions are being filled.
FINALLY SOLD
Fonterra has agreed the sale of its two joint venture farms in China, with the sale expected to be completed on 30 June. The farms in Shandong province will be sold to Singapore-based AustAsia Investment Holdings for US$115.5 mln. Fonterra, which owns the farms with a joint venture partner, has a 51% stake in the business and will receive NZ$88 mln in total asset sale proceeds, which includes cash on completion. These farms were running at a loss. The sale of the JV farms is unconditional and requires no further regulatory approvals. And earlier sale to their JV partner fell through. Fonterra sold its two wholly owned China farming hubs in Shanxi and Hebei provinces to Inner Mongolia Youran Dairy in April for NZ$552 mln.
GOLD SLIPS
Compared to where it ended on Saturday, the gold price is down -US$7 to US$1775/oz in early Asian trading.
EQUITY MARKETS FLAT
Although it fell quite sharply at its open, the NZX50 Capital Index has clawed all that back to be almost flat in late trade, perhaps down -0.1%. The ASX200 is also flat in early afternoon trade. The very large Tokyo equity market has opened down -0.3%, Hong Kong is closed due to severe weather, while Shanghai has opened flat too. The S&P500 futures are trading flat as well.
SWAP & BONDS TRACK HIGHER
We don't have today's closing swap rates yet. If there are significant changes again today, we will update this item. They probably rose about +3 bps for the 2 year. The 90 day bank bill rate is up +1 bp at 0.34%. The Australian Govt ten year benchmark rate is unchanged from this morning at 1.56%. The China Govt ten year bond is also unchanged at 3.11%. The New Zealand Govt ten year however is up +4 bps at 1.86% and still well above the earlier RBNZ fix of 1.83% (+4 bps). The US Govt ten year is down -2 bps to 1.52%.
NZ DOLLAR FIRM
The Kiwi dollar is still where it was this time Friday, now at 70.7 USc. Against the Aussie we are firm at 93.2 AUc. Against the euro we are also firm at 59.3 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is now a bit above 73.1.
BITCOIN REGAINS
The bitcoin price is now at US$34,486 and up +4.3% from where we were at on Saturday. Most of the gains happened between 10 and 11am this morning. Volatility in the past 24 hours has been very high at +/- 4.0%.
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26 Comments
This is a great business story from NZ that should be celebrated.
A Kiwi company selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has announced a new partnership with comic book juggernaut Marvel. Auckland-based Orbis Blockchain Technologies Ltd, which is better known for its app VeVe, sells digital artworks and virtual models which customers can interact with on their phones and display in virtual galleries.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/300340180/kiwi-nft-company-announces-d…
Clearly no knowledge how fungible digital tokens work on a block chain. More bragging rights in my opinion. Being able to claim ownership of a digital item, but you can still enjoy it just as much by having a copy of it. Just like having a copy of the Mona Lisa is nice to enjoy, but you dont own the original do you.
Oh the irony. Typing a comment into a terminal saying how useless/pointless/worthless that terminal and typing is. What a massive own goal.
https://towardsdatascience.com/data-is-the-new-oil-f11440e80dd0
Many increases in economy now being reported as growth is more likely in my view to be inflation being reported as growth.
Next 6 months will be very interesting to see how much inflation rises and if we see rents/fuel and food increase as suppliers reprice future contracts and how quickly our debt ponzi hits a wall.
Yes maybe even more than half but what is amazing is peoples ease with large debt and no FHB buyer groups on facebook/reddit even talking about how to beat the current system.
Agents are having a field day at moment and are just playing buyers against each other with no price marketing.
Just look at the reddit crowd and what they have done to certain stocks why not do the same to houses with a some smart buying strategies.
Not sure that's direct evidence. My asb and Westpac accounts both run at less than 10k, one is my current account and the other I use as a brokerage account. Most is saved and invested elsewhere.
But yes, I expect there's still a disturbingly high number of people unable to take a financial punch.
The percentage of Kiwis living from one pay-day to the next reduced in the year to February 2021, with 6% of ASB customers able to build up enough savings over the year to change this pattern. The ASB study also found that more than a third of customers frequently had balances of less than their average weekly expenses, and 15% of customers always spend more than 80% of their income.
A third of ASB customers had at least $10,000 in savings, up on a year ago, with 4% of customers crossing this savings threshold during the pandemic. However, the latest data for February 2021 also shows nearly half of customers have less than $1,000 in savings.
https://www.asb.co.nz/documents/media-centre/media-releases/one-year-on…
Just got an email from NZ post telling me they are bringing all their courier companies under the one brand. Got me wondering: why does the government run a courier company? Surely the private sector can do that? I can kind of see the point in government running snail mail but even then isn’t it entirely used by business these days?
Cue the race to produce a "this is not financial advice" filter which will auto-magically appear on every snap, insta, tweet and tiktok where the natural language processing that is cataloguing voice data for advertising purposes, detects keywords related to investment. Another example of a system that can't keep up with technology, trying to influence it.
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