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A review of the things you need to know before you go home on Thursday; Aussie jobs shrinking, their currency tanks; Truckometer moderates; swaps fall; milk volumes up

A review of the things you need to know before you go home on Thursday; Aussie jobs shrinking, their currency tanks; Truckometer moderates; swaps fall; milk volumes up
For Thursday, January 16, 2014. <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/">Image sourced from Shutterstock.com</a>

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

Firstly, the number of Australian unemployed increased by 8,000 in December, the participation rate decreased, and the December unemployment rate was 5.8%. 23,000 jobs were shed, making things a bit more gloomy.

This saw the Aussie sell off sharply, and the Kiwi rose almost a whole cent to 94.4 AUc to the NZD. We are now at out highest rate against the Aussie since December 2005, an eight year high, and now close to the all-time high of 95.5c.

ANZ's 'Truckometer' monitoring, which tracks heavy and light truck kms travelled, showed a slowing of growth from the very fast pace of the last quarter in 2013. The moderation was expected because that hot pace was unlikely to be maintained, says ANZ. The Heavy Truck component is interesting because it has a great record of predicting GDP.

Swap rates have fallen about 3 bps across all terms over the day.

The dairy industry has updated its mik volume stats to the end of November and they show a continuing increase over last year. It was the best November volume on record. But year-to-date volumes are not back yet to pre-drought levels.

Kiwibank business banking has today launched a term deposit offer for businesses. It's launch special targets a 100 day offer of 3.95%, and businesses can use it up to $5 million. The only other bank with a business-focused TD offer is RaboDirect, who also have a $5 mln limit. (RaboDirect's 3 month rate is 3.25% and their top rate is 4.30% for 18 mths.)

In addition, Credit Union South had some action in its TD offer. It added a new 18 mth rate.

Bill English is off to hob-nob with the rich and famous at Davos in Switzerland.

And the Telstra sale of its directories business in Australia has exposed the valuations at Yellow NZ - their bank shareholders may be in for further big writedowns.

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5 Comments

Beware , when Australia sneezes , New Zealand catches a cold .

Lets not gloat over the problems in Australia , their problems could wash up here in NZ quite easily  given we are almost the 8th state in the commonwealth.  

Aussie is a robust economy , and its humungous when compared to ours, and we are much closer in our dependance on them and their markets than most people realise  .

Aussie remains our biggest trading partner , and our economy is smaller than Tasmania.

Lets wish them a speedy recovery

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You are wrong. New Zealand's biggest trading partner is now China.

 

New Zealand's economy (211 billion NZD - GDP 2013) is an order of magnitude larger than Tasmania's (24 billion AUD - 2013).

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Time to Synch our currency to the Aussie Dollar don't you think ? As soon as it hits NZ $1.00=AUD$1:00 we should swap currency. Would be better for us in the long run to become another state of Aussie, shame the Kiwi pride won't let that happen.

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Can we get two states - North NZ and South NZ?

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 Huh , no chance cobberdiggermate ! .... we'll take charge for a change of pace , and the combined nation of New Zealia will consist of three states ...

 

.... the exisitng North and South Islands of NZ , and the newly annointed West Island ( formerly known as Australia ) ....

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