Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today:
PLEASE NOTE
Our offices are closed due to storm damage to our electricity supply. This has limited some of the usual data and services we deliver. In our neighbourhood, just four or five blocks are affected, but we are one of them. Vector is no longer giving an estimate for our suburb. If you have storm damage, this review may assist when preparing an insurance claim.
MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes to report today.
TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
Nothing to report today.
NEXT DATA RELEASE
The REINZ advised today that their March data will be available on Tuesday, April 17, at 9am.
MIXED MESSAGES
ANZ reported its March Truckometer tracking and that is giving mixed messages now. "The Heavy Traffic Index fell 0.3% m/m in March, to be down 0.7% for the quarter. This isn’t a strong signal for GDP growth, but the index has been volatile lately. With anecdote suggesting a decent quarter, we will wait for more pieces of the GDP puzzle before drawing any conclusions. On the other hand, the Light Traffic Index bounced 2.2% m/m, after a few months of fairly lacklustre performance. This index is giving a softer signal for growth from mid-year, but the bounce-back is encouraging."
RESTRAINED PRICES
China reported that producer price inflation continued cool in March, slowing to a 17-month low of +3.1% and backing expectations of a broader slackening in economic growth this year. Their consumer price tracking shows an even faster slowing with a sharp drop between February and March (although the timing of Spring Festival this year may be part of the reason).
RESTRICTIONS BEING REVIEWED
The Reserve Bank said it is reviewing its current approach to allowing overseas banks to use restricted words in New Zealand without being registered here as a bank (restricted words include “bank’ and its derivatives such as “banker” and “banking”). This work is intended to provide a more transparent and rigorous framework for dealing with this issue - not to materially change the scope for overseas banks to operate in New Zealand without first being registered here.
HESITATING
In Australia, consumer sentiment eased slightly in April as worries about the future for family finances just managed to offset optimism about the economic outlook. A Melbourne Institute and Westpac Bank survey of 1,200 people published on Wednesday showed its index of consumer sentiment dipped 0.6 per cent in April, from March when it rose 0.2 per cent. The index was still up 3.4 per cent on March last year at 102.4, meaning optimists just outnumbered pessimists.
MARKET TURNS
Staying in Australia, there was a sharp fall in building approvals for apartments in February as investors vanish. Sagging prices will be next.
THE MEA CULPAS KEEP COMING
NAB chief exectutive's chief of staff, Rosemary Rogers, is under investigation for a major fraud on the bank involving property investments and millions of dollars. CEO Andrew Thorburn is reported to have said: "I’m a proud banker but I’m not proud of a number of the things our company and our industry has been associated with. There’s been probably five to 10 years of errors, missteps and mistakes. Most of them are genuine errors the bank has made, but then there are those very, very few which we would call fraud and deceit and manipulation and illegal conduct."
MY GUESS
I reckon President Trump will fire the Special Counsel Robert Mueller overnight to prevent him getting any closer to him in the ongoing Russia election influence investigation. Today was the set-up day
BENCHMARK INTEREST RATES UNCHANGED
Local swap rates are essentially unchanged again today after being up +1 bp earlier in the day across the board. The UST 10yr yield is now at 2.80%, down -1 bp. The Aussie Govt 10 yr is now at 2.70% (unchanged). The China 10 yr is up +2 bps at 3.75% and the NZ Govt 10 yr is up +1 bp at 2.82%. But the 90 day bank bill rate is up +1 bp, hitting 2.00% for the first time since February 2017. For more on this, see here.
BITCOIN HOLDS
The bitcoin price is at US$6,840 which is a gain of +1.4% since this time yesterday.
NZ DOLLAR INCHES HIGHER, BUT SOFTENING
The NZD is up slightly at 73.5 USc although this is trending down from even higher levels earlier in the day. Ditto on the cross rates where we are at 94.8 AUc and at 59.5 euro cents. That puts the TWI-5 at 74.6.
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8 Comments
Evil, perhaps you might accept AMP and Herron Todd White's (large Australian housing valuer) opinion on it (http://www.afr.com/real-estate/residential-property-prices-set-to-plung…). That agrees with what David has said.
I don't love declining investments either, but sometimes you just have to accept it, and just diversify, diversify, diversify, and diversify when investing.
On the TV news the news readers very often put their opinion into the "news" by their pained look or intonation or flippant "jokes" in between the news items. In my opinion Judy Bailey was the one who did this in the most obvious way.
If DC does this in a written sense on this site, well maybe we should be a bit tolerant. Its his place of work.
But of course even if we the punters say nothing, we can make our own minds up about whether we agree with what is being said or not. Or in many cases, (may I suggest in this case) that there is just not enough information available in order to draw that particular conclusion.
Actually Australian house prices have been declining for several months now.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-01/australian-housing-prices-slip-fo…
Thank you for your integrity DC.
From "What happened today" Thursday 12th:
NEW HOUSING FINANCE STILL RISING
In Australia, data out today shows that loan for the purchase of housing (dwellings) where up +4.3% in the year to February 2018 over the same year to February 2017. It is those buying newly build properties (houses and apartments) that are incurring most the new debt, which overall rose by +AU$10.3 bln to AU$253 bln.
MY GUESS WAS WRONG
I jumped the gun, it seems. (See yesterday's 'prediction'.)
It may be that the official position has softened in recent days, or it may just be the dawning recognition that China, contrary to most assessments, is in a much worse overall shape than the United States. We talk about global Japanification including what’s been done to the US economy since August 2007, but it has been far from uniform playing out this way.
http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2018/04/10/chinas-xi-really-had-no-choi…
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