Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news the latest dairy auction has seen prices fall marginally since the last auction.
But first, America's trade deficit narrowed sharply in June, driven by record exports and a fast shrinking bill for oil imports, brightening the outlook for domestic growth in the second quarter.
But stock markets are falling, along with gold and oil prices. The reason? co-ordinated talk from preiphery Fed members suggesting that tapering could begin as early as September. Yesterday it was a Fed hawk Fisher, today it was comment from Fed dove Evans and the Atlanta Fed's Lockhart.
Oil prices are down to US$105/barrel; gold prices are below US$1,300/oz; and in late trade the Dow and S&P500 are down more than 0.5%.
Overnight, there has been a set of good data coming out of Europe. From Italy, to Britain, to Germany, better than expected industrial output data is reinforcing the idea that Europe has turned an economic corner of some sort.
In China, talk of shipyard struggles may be premature with a slew of big new orders won recently.
Yesterday's Australian rate cut - to 2.5%, the same as for New Zealand, has seen their banks match it with equivalent mortgage rate cuts - except that Westpac has cut their floating mortgage rate by 28 bps, to 5.98%, although the other major lenders there have floating rates closer to 5.90%. Even though we have a similar OCR, typical carded New Zealand floating rates from the big banks are 5.75%.
Not only were mortgage rates cut yesterday in Australia, the Opposition political party announced plans to cut their company tax rate to 28.5% from 30% if they are elected. If such a move were enacted, it would put the Aussie company tax rate at almost the same as New Zealand's.
The latest GolbalDairyTrade auction overnight saw prices slip 2.4% from the last auction, down 2.7% in NZ$ terms as our currency has strengthened a little in the past two weeks. There certainly was no noticeable buyer reaction to the latest reputation crisis. Remarkably, prices are now more than 60% higher than they were one year ago.
The NZ dollar continues its sharp recovery, more than 1c higher that at this time yesterday at 79.1 USc, the Aussie dollar is at 88.0 AUc, and the TWI is at 74.8.
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