Kia ora,
and welcome to Tuesday's Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect New Zealand.
I'm David Chaston and this is the International edition from Interest.co.nz.
Today we lead with news markets and traders are feeling more positive.
On Wall Street we can see the return of a risk vibe in equity markets with the S&P500 up +0.6% so far in a positive start to the week. Signals that the US and China may actually complete their min-trade deal, and a market belief that Brexit will end up ok is driving sentiment. But these are only guesses at this stage.
Bond prices fell, yields rose on the same vibe.
In China, house price growth fell again in September according to official data out today. There are reports of heavy discounting by developers and those effects won't come through in the official data for a while yet.
And their central bank surprised the market by keeping the new benchmark rate for banks' lending unchanged at 4.2% in October, defying expectations of a cut, despite the latest data showed the economic growth slowed to its slowest pace in 30 years.
Japanese merchandise exports fell more than -5% in September, a bit more than expected but less that the -8% they fell in August. It's only a little thing, but the outlier here is New Zealand. Japan's exports to us were up +19% and imports from us down -14%. That put the trade between us in September into balance. For the half year to September, New Zealand ran a sizable merchandise trade surplus with Japan.
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The annual Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report for 2019 has some surprising entries. New Zealand is identified as one of the top gainers in overall wealth per capita, coming in at #5 ahead of Singapore, but behind the usual suspects of Switzerland, the USA, Japan and the Netherlands. The other surprise is the dramatic fall in this list for Australia which recorded the largest fall of any country.
In Australia, there is growing talk the Fletcher Building is now a takeover target.
The UST 10yr yield is up sharply again today, up +5 bps to 1.80%.
Gold is down -US$5 overnight to US$1,485/oz.
US oil prices are soft today, now just under US$53.50/bbl. The Brent benchmark is just under US$59.
The Kiwi dollar is firm against the greenback today, now at 64 USc and a full +1c gain in the past four trading sessions. On the cross rates we are firm at 93.2 AUc. Against the euro we are at 57.4 euro cents. That puts the TWI-5 up at 68.9.
You can find links to the articles mentioned today in our show notes.
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