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A review of things you need to know before you go home on Wednesday; TD rate cuts, Apple disappoints, gold sinks, home loan record, China sentiment slips, swap rates and NZD unchanged

A review of things you need to know before you go home on Wednesday; TD rate cuts, Apple disappoints, gold sinks, home loan record, China sentiment slips, swap rates and NZD unchanged

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

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
There are no rate changes to report today.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
Liberty Financial and ANZ both reduced term deposit rates today.

BIGGER THAN MANY COUNTRIES
Apple's financial results have come in lower than expected. Stock markets then wiped US$62 bln from their share value. Or NZ$93 bln. That's like stopping the NZ economy dead in its tracks for five months. But its only a -9% fall .. even as overall sales rose. The big disappointment was their new watch.

YELLOW METAL SINKS FURTHER
The price of gold is still falling, under pressure in China and other Asian trading today. As we publish, it is at US$1,094 and below the low we saw in New York in overnight trading. "Good buying opportunity" says someone in our office.

FEWER AND FATTER
The number of new mortgages approved last week was lower than the week before, but the value of them was higher. That has seen the average approval value jump to a new record high of $227,846. (Remember, many households split their borrowing among home loans timed to different maturities. And rolled-over arrangements that switch between banks are classed by the new bank as 'new'.) When the RBNZ started collecting this data in 2003 the average was less than $110,000.

RECORD UPTAKE
KiwiSaver membership has now grown to 2,530,000. The number of KiwiSaver enrollments continues to rise in the over-18 year old target population, with an additional 11,656 members in the month of June, There was a pre-budget rush to sign-up, apparently.

CO-ORDINATED TUNE
Everyone expects a -25 bps rate cut from the RBNZ tomorrow. Today, RBA Governor Stevens said today that the question of further rate cuts in Australia "is on the table".

NOT THE RISE EXPECTED
Climbing petrol prices and the lower Australian dollar pushed up June quarter inflation in Australia - but not up to what markets were expecting. Their June rate is +1.5%; the rate excluding food and petrol is +2.3%. Equivalent New Zealand numbers are +0.3% and +0.9%.

MORE CHINA DISAPPOINTMENT
After showing encouraging signs that more supportive policy was having an impact in June, Chinese business confidence pulled back sharply in July, matching April’s more than six year low, according to the latest MNI China Business Sentiment Survey.

WHOLESALE RATES UNCHANGED
NZ swap rates for terms 2 to 5 years fell by -1 bp while the 10 year rose by +1 bp. The 90 day bank bill rate fell by -1 bps to 3.06%. Markets have set their bets for the RBNZ tomorrow.

NZ DOLLAR UNCHANGED
The NZ dollar is basically unchanged on the day at 66.6 USc, at 89.6 AUc, and 60.6 euro cents. The TWI is at 71.1. Check our real-time charts here.

You can now see an animation of this chart. Click on it, or click here.

Daily exchange rates

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Source: RBNZ
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End of day UTC
Source: CoinDesk

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6 Comments

It's a pity some NZ companies couldn't deliver some of Apple's " disappointments " - just look at what they achieved from an existing huge base.

An incredible result by any measure !

You do wonder what goes through a so called analysts brain .... Just read the actual results below.

The new larger-screen iPhones, especially the 5.5-inch version, are helping improving the average selling price by $99, or 18 percent, from a year ago, Apple said.

Total revenue, which rose 33 percent to $49.6 billion compared with a year ago, would have been 8 percent higher, Maestri said.

“FX has been a significant hit in many ways,” he said.

Net income in the fiscal third quarter, which ended in June, was $10.7 billion, or $1.85 a share, marking the best April-through-June period since 2012.

Analysts on average had forecast third-quarter profit of $1.81 a share on sales of $49.4 billion. The gross margin was 39.7 percent, topping the company’s outlook for 38.5 percent to 39.5 percent.

Apple forecast continued growth, saying it may have revenue of $49 billion to $51 billion in its fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in September. That was short of the average estimate for $51.1 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

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It's the gift that keeps on giving. Up until recently.

An iPhone generates approximately $650 in revenue for Apple. This figure has remained fairly steady over time. Using deduction from overall margins, it’s possible to estimate the gross margin on the product to be around 55%. Read more

And your money ends up here;

Braeburn Capital sounds like a staid, run-of-the-mill asset management firm, and that’s probably the intention.

In reality, it is the secretive arm of the world’s biggest company, Apple, and was set up to manage the iconic device maker’s giant cash pile. On April 27, the company’s total cash hoard was revealed to have hit a new peak of $194 billion—more than the foreign reserves of Germany! Enough to buy all sorts of things!—meaning Braeburn probably has plenty of work to do. Read more

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Principal AU head-kicker government MP and minister for Social Welfare says

Housing affordability and housing-stock shortage at the centre of social ills

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/scott-morrison-sa…

The same guy that turned back the boats and stopped 50,000 refugees pa - a real head-kicker

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Will Mr Wheeler surprise with a 0,5% cut to the OCR this morning?

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For me the surprise would be 0 or 75. Just looking around me and I really wonder why things look worse than the numbers our "rock star" economy says we are doing. I hope the RB gets it right whatever it does, getting it wrong would be nasty.

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Martin Hawes on TV news this morning saying mortgages coming with a '3' at the front by years end. Don't fix yet, he says.

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