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A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; QSBO less pessimistic; food prices favour the good stuff, dairy auction signals, swaps dip further, NZD stable, & more

A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; QSBO less pessimistic; food prices favour the good stuff, dairy auction signals, swaps dip further, NZD stable, & more

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
None so far today.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
None here either.

BUSINESSES LESS GLOOMY, NOT MORE HAPPY
Business sentiment and demand pick up in the December quarter from low levels, according to the NZIER; Weak profitability remains a problem. ANZ says today’s data are consistent with their view that the economy is not performing well enough to achieve a durable lift in inflation. "We see the RBNZ cutting the OCR late this year to give the economy a pick-me-up."

5+ A DAY IS CHEAPER
Food prices are not rising - in fact healthy food prices are lower now than at the start of 2018. Better weather conditions kept prices of fruit & vegetables considerably lower

LONG SERVING BNZ EXECUTIVE LEAVING
Long serving BNZ executive Shelley Ruha is leaving the bank. BNZ says Ruha, chief customer officer for its partners business, will leave on February 28. Ruha has worked for BNZ for 29 years starting in 1990 as a graduate in the bank's Dominion Road branch in Auckland.

LOOKING GOOD
There is another dairy auction tomorrow morning. Indications from the derivatives market are that we could be in for a good, positive one. WMP might lead the way up with a +4% or so rise. But be aware, the derivatives market has given false signals before.

ANOTHER AUSSIE RATE RISE
In Australia, another second-tier bank has lifted mortgage rates y about +20 bps. NAB-owned U-Bank is the next to move up, following Virgin Money. The out-of-cycle rate pressure is building in Australia and it seems it is just a matter of time before one of the big banks moves up as well.

EQUITY MARKET MOVES
Following yesterday's lonely rise by the NZX50, the S&P500 fell again today by -0.5% following the Europeans. But Tokyo is up in early trading today by +0.4%, Hong Kong is up by +0.8% while Shanghai is only level pegging. The ASX is up +0.4% after yesterday's fall, but the NZX50 keeps on rising even if it is only +0.1% today.

MOVE OVER GOLD
Gold prices are moving up, but the big mover among precious metals is for palladium. This metal has real industrial uses - one big one is in catalytic converters for cars. Demand is strong and has pushed its price up to US$1,337/oz in London and that compares with US$1,293 for gold (85% of who's demand is for speculation).

SWAP RATES DRIFT DOWN
Local wholesale swap rates are soft again today. That pushes the short end to new all-time lows with the 2yr now below 1.90%. The UST 10yr yield is little-changed at 2.71%, stable in very light trade. Their 2-10 curve is just under +17 bps. The Aussie Govt 10yr is at 2.29% and unchanged, the China Govt 10yr is down-1 bp at 3.15%, while the NZ Govt 10 yr is at 2.32%, and down -2 bps.. The 90 day bank bill rate is down -2 bps to 1.91%.

BITCOIN UP
The bitcoin price has moved higher today, now at US$3,668 and that is a gain of +4.2%.

NZD HOLDS
The Kiwi dollar is holding its level in light trading at 68.4 USc. On the cross rates, we also little-changed against the Aussie at 94.8 AUc and are still at 59.5 euro cents. That puts the TWI-5 marginally higher at 72.3.

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Daily exchange rates

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Source: CoinDesk

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15 Comments

....little 'dig' at gold I see :)

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7 more Kiwibuild homes at Papakura open for ballots. 2 bedroom terrraced at $525k.
https://mclennan.co.nz/mclennan-kiwibuild/
These homes features:

double glazing
full insulation
landscaping
a single car pad
separate toilet and bathroom.

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So that brings the grand total up to 33. Just over 2 per month since the Coalition took power. Only 99967 to go in next 8.75 years to meet their election promise! (ie 11300 per year)

But housing consents have stopped rising under this coalition as they were for the previous 6 years under National at a compounding rate of about 2500 per year and kiwibuild is never going to make up for that dropoff in the rest of the building industry.

So for all their talk we end up with a worse shortfall of housing under Labour.

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Shock. Horreur. Government fails to deliver. Whatever next? Yellow vests, anyone?

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Yep, have said previously that kiwibuild is shit and should be abandoned.
But the fall off in consents is nothing to do with kiwibuild, just the market running out of mugs willing to bid it up once the Foreign buyers were mostly removed.

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It is probably best that kiwibuilds shortfalls in a reversing market are exposed at the beginning of the project rather than later on down the track.
I don't think kiwibuild is the right solution in a market that is going backwards, it was alright when it was going north. This factor seems to be being ignored by all parties, for their own reasons

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..yep, best we get Key back to clean up his own mess eh.

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Kiwibuild requires things to actually happen to succeed. That could be beyond this governments capabilities.

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Brexit gets closer every day - so the EU can forge ahead without the restraint of the UK.

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Good to see that tenants can win against crap landlords in the tribunal:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12…

We got compensated 2k last year. Doesn't take too much effort.

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Having my first experience of property managers currently in between house ownership. What a time it has been!! 3 weeks wait to fix broken hobs without compensation, tapware in bathrooms not working, holes in the wall from previous tenants, garage door openers not provided without multiple reminders....and now they tell us they forgot to get us to sign their pet agreement (only 6 weeks into the tenancy, when they have always known we had a pet) which breaches multiple case law precedent (Osaki case) and regulations in the residential tenancies act...I cannot wait to buy the next house and get away from this hassle.

The sooner this area is regulated with mandatory education, licencing and ethical standards (much like real estate agents) the better - the crap they have tried to pull already is astounding and their lack of respect for their customer, the tenant, is mind boggling.

The petulant comments of the B&T manager in the article is indicative of the problems in this sector. What the industry needs to realise if they continue to undervalue and disrespect their tenants, the pendulum will swing to provide more protection to the tenant rather than an even respectful relationship which is needed to ensure longevity.

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The last property we rented in Christchurch before we bought was subdivided. The garage + sleepout was excluded from the Tenancy so the landlord could use it for his business.

What I wasn’t made aware of is he hadn’t arranged to split the power off so we were getting $200 - $300 power bills in a house with gas cooking/hot water because his receptionist ran the heat pump all day.

Also the Tile floor in the bathroom gave way, leaving a 500x500 hole. Took 4 months to fix. I was cool about everything, never once threatened a 14 day notice.

Come the end of the Tenancy the property manager tries clawing back $1000+ in repairs out of my bond, all on pre-existing damages that were noted on the report. They had also offered us another 12 months with a $10 week increase, then advertised the place for $40 a week less than what we were paying.

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Yay, the KiwiBore houses at McLennan look absolutely amazing for $525k!
Great value and will be ideal for families I bet!
KiwiBore is a non event and anyone with a half a brain should’ve been able to work that out when Twyford starting changing everything!
He is out of his depth with both of his portfolios and He needs to be replaced!
Not sure who with because the Coalition of Losers have not got anyone with business acumen!

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Petulent indeed. In my experience most - although certainly not all - property managers are clowns.

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