Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today (or if you already work from home, before you shutdown your laptop).
MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
CFML raised their floating rate by +46 bps to 8.95%.
TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
Apart from the short rate changes from Westpac we noted late yesterday, there were TD rises today from TSB (who now have a 4% 3 month offer), from WBS, and from Unity Money.
COLLAPSE
The bottom dropped out of the lifestyle block market over summer. The REINZ said lifestyle block sales are down -45% on a year ago. Instead of January being the usual high month for sales, it is now its lowest.
DEATH JUMP
Data from Statistics NZ today shows that the number of births in 2022 were there lowest since 2003. The same data shows that while we managed to keep deaths low in 2020 and 2021 with effective pandemic restrictions, when they were released, deaths zoomed higher in 2022 to 37,800, a surge out of the ordinary only exceeded by those recorded in the 20th century world wars.
BANKS LIVE ON DEPOSITOR CONSERVATIVENESS
Bank depositors are getting marginally more comfortable with committing their bank deposits to longer terms. But it is pretty marginal. Depositor funds ("non-market funding") committed for 6 to 12 months now represent 11.7% of all deposits, and the most since May 2019. Depositor commitments for longer than 1 year are a tiny 2.5%. That means 85.8% are only committed for a term less than 6 months, with most at call. Of course, banks know almost all of that will get rolled over. But because depositors are exceedingly conservative they only have to pay interest on a fraction of that on the basis it is short term.
AUSSIE HOME LENDING WEAK
In Australia, home lending was weak in January, dropping the most month-on-month since July 2022. Lending to investors fell the most. House price declines are suppressing listings and are likely to reduce loan sizes, putting downward pressure on total lending.
SWAP RATES HOLD HIGH
Wholesale swap rates are likely little-changed today at the short end. The real action in swap rates comes near the close however. Our chart will record the final positions. The 90 day bank bill rate is up +1 bp to 5.16% which is now +41 bps above the current OCR. The Australian 10 year bond yield is now at 3.92% and up a chunky +10 bps from this time yesterday. The China 10 year bond rate is firmish at 2.94%. And the NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now at 4.75% and up +11 bps and still above the earlier RBNZ fix at 4.68% which was up +9 bps today. The UST 10 year is up +4 bps at 4.05% in a further rise to be its highest since November.
EQUITIES MOSTLY HIGHER
Wall Street ended its Thursday session with the S&P500 up +0.8% and just ignoring the rising bond market yields. Not sure how long that will last. The NZX50 is down -0.% in late trade and heading for a weekly dip of the same amount. The ASX200 is up +0.4% in Friday afternoon trade and heading for a -0.4% weekly slip. Hong Kong has opened up +0.4% today and heading for a strong weekly rise of +4.0%. Shanghai has opened up +0.4% today and heading for a good +2.0% weekly gain. And Tokyo is following, up +1.3% today and heading for a +2.0% weekly rise.
GOLD FIRMS AGAIN
In early Asian trade, gold is slightly firmer from this time yesterday, now at US$1838/oz and up another +US$4.
NZD ON HOLD
The Kiwi dollar is little-changed from this time yesterday at 62.3 USc. Against the Aussie we are also little-changed at 92.4 AUc. Against the euro we are little-changed as well at 58.7 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is still at 70.6.
BITCOIN DROPS
Bitcoin is down a sharp -5.2% today, now at US$22,308. If you know why, please note it in the comment section below. It may relate to the run on the crypto-focused bank Silvergate whose parlous position over its FTX relationship is being exposed. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been high at +/-3.2%.
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107 Comments
The same data shows that while we managed to keep deaths low in 2020 and 2021 with effective pandemic restrictions, when they were released, deaths zoomed higher in 2022 to 37,800, a surge out of the ordinary only exceeded by those recorded in the 20th century world wars.
So not avoided then, just postponed. I'm sure someone will be along shortly (Shaun Hendy, perhaps?) to argue the counterfactual, and tell us all how much worse it would have been without the restrictions.
It’s pretty obvious from the overseas experience we saved about 8000 lives.
For how long i.e. what was the normal life expectancy of those 8000 who died from covid with/without co-morbidity?
Less than 100 years.
I meant remaining life expectancy.
So did I.
On average , around 17 years .
Health economics measures things in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs). It's a numeraire they use in cost effectiveness analyses for pharma and operations etc. That would be the most accurate measure and there's probably some work on COVID measured in QALYs, or there should be. Don't shoot the messenger.
Mostly it's the weak and very old that we saved, but they are still weak and very old. That was a very light Pandemic IMHO compared with a really serious bad flu......
Only need to look at the Swedish excess mortality rates to confirm this. They had more excess deaths in 2017 flu season. Of course the Swedes and anyone who agreed with them, were vilified by the media.
Wrong! Those 8000 are dieng now at about 30 a week!
Then there is the (and ongoing) mental anxiety causd by the oppresive lockdown rules which has led to many depressions and deaths not recorded as covid related deaths.
Then al the murders post lock down mania
Plus the sùicides...
So much for Arderns and Doomfields zeto covid lock down bullshite ?
Yes , there's been very little discussion about the " side effects " of lockdowns , mandates & all the other restrictive policies enacted ... to stop a nasty version of the common cold ...
... chemotherapies delayed / surgeries postponed / we placed everything on hold , and focused 100 % on Covid19 ...
Death is always postponed but maybe it was not postponed by much if the death surge was from oldies who would have normally died from winter chills etc. What would be more interesting is the excess death rate amongst younger age cohorts e.g. not getting cancer treatments etc. I suppose I could look at the stats but too lazy for a Friday afternoon.
... I recall that during the height / OTT panic of Covid19 , US statisticians showed that the " average " person who died because of the virus lost 16 or 17 years of future life ...
Which ... is kind of important ... that Nan or Uncle pushes through to a golden 90 , rather than a paltry 73 ...
So you think the number of deaths would have been the same had we let it rip in 2020 without being vaccinated? I got a bridge to sell you…
Nobody mentioned the vaccine.
Had we gone back to normal once 70% vaccinated I doubt there would have been much difference in total deaths. Instead they kept Auckland in lockdown and all sorts of other controls in place for ages. I don’t necessarily blame the government, they were trying to follow their expert advice which is what they should do, the problem is that epidemiology seems like a very unscientific science full of people that failed statistics at high school. Keeping 5 million people in lockdown for an extra month is effectively a loss of 150,000,000 days of life, or the same as 410,000 people losing a year of their life. Yet the so called experts kept wanting more and more lockdowns without even calculating the other side of the coin.
I'd argue the percentage could have been much lower than that, with essentially the same outcome. There is a reasonably small percentage of high-risk individuals when it comes to COVID-19, and we know who they are.
Yes and the vast majority of those were vaccinated by about 20%.
I’m afraid your opinions are not considered scientific evidence
For sure, mine was a very rough calculation. Although at least I got scholarship statistics at school. Do you have scientific evidence that the measures taken saved more life hours than they lost, particularly after say 70% vaccination?
I think the first national lockdown was understandable. The second Auckland lockdown (100 days) was performative. The people in Wellington were doing *something* .
Royal Commission really needs to learn some lessons so we don't make the same mistakes again.
The argument was that we postponed the inevitable which would have been true had we not intervened with a vaccine prior to letting it rip but those two years of postponement allowed for a vaccine to be developed and administered (albeit poorly) to the vast majority of citizens prior to it being widespread in a community without any immunity.
I think the majority of us were happy with the response up until the vaccine was available to everyone. But the months of Auckland lockdown waiting for some 20 year olds and anti vaxers who were very unlikely to die to get vaccinated was just stupid. And remember that every time the government eased restrictions, the “experts” said it was way too soon, and they wanted a circuit breaker level 4 lockdown when we had bugger all cases. I honestly think they would have restrictions in place now if they were in charge.
I think the whole thing was almost completely bollocks. The lab leak theory was false, but now we find it was true, the vaccines prevented transmission, except now we find they didn’t. Masks were effective, but now we find that was not true either. Lock downs worked, but now we find they caused more harm than good. Infection provided no immunity, except actually it does and is far better than getting vaccinated, just like other common coronavirus (the common cold, which Covid actually is). Almost everything we got told and forced into was completely wrong. Even if it was dangerous, the govt effort would have been a failure. I’m just pleased I ignored everything, got exemptions for all the stupid rules and carried on as normal. The Covid wimps are more silly looking by the day. I notice the idiot Michael baker (masks are the new normal for ever LOL) has been spirited away. Thank goodness.
The families of almost 7 million people might disagree with your claim that it was complete bollacks…
People die, every day. Many of those that died were incorrectly classified, many died of Covid instead of the flu when terminally ill and would have died anyway. Even people that got shot and killed when they had Covid were classified as covid deaths. The whole classification process was completely flawed and massively overstated the true toll, as we have subsequently found out the numbers are a statistical fraud.
Yup no argument with what you’ve stated. That doesn’t invalidate the overall situation across the globe.
I just think you need to be a bit more balanced and less emotive
I can understand people getting a bit emotive when you recall that Ardern morphed overnight into a grandstanding authoritarian dictator ... she misused Covid19 as a tool to bolster her Labour government's public standing ...
... and her sidekick Robbo stepped in to " save " the economy they'd just locked down , by issuing & splashing out tens of $ billions of borrowed dosh ...
Wanna get emotive & pissed off about this ? ... be my guest !
You’ve let your emotions overtake your rational mind? It’s embarrassing
... says you , but you're wrong ... 12 months ago 100's of protesters parked up on the parliament , seriously pissed off by the government's behaviour ...
Emotional ? ... embarrassing ? ... or rightly indignant that the government had bullied them !
All of the above and some just outright criminal
That’s a different argument to mine. Whether it was from a lab or not is meaningless IMO (in fact it’s more dangerous if from a lab). The vaccine did work against delta which is what we were worried about at the time. I’m also not convinced that masks don’t work, they must at least reduce the amount of transmission from the person wearing it.
But I do agree that the experts in this field (even the likes of the WHO) have very few brain cells to rub together, they missed the obvious correlation with the common cold (remember when they told everyone to keep washing their hands FFS).
I am very pro science, but there are a few fields that seem to be less like science and more like astrology.
I agree that was the strategy and with all the unknowns bouncing around, it was totally understandable for the government to follow that line at that particular point of time. I don’t like this government much, but I don’t think any other responsible government would have done otherwise. Additionally it is glaringly obvious that there was a great deal of confusion and inefficiency emanating from MoH headquarters. The government had to take that on the chin. To do otherwise would have further downgraded public confidence in NZ’s health services in general.
Therein lies the problem. Regardless of which political party is in power, you have a well entrenched public sector that are more often than not stuck in their ways. We elect the officials, but their promises are subject to the various non-elected government departments toeing the line.
Hypothetical: Labour promise to cut immigration by 100k. 80% of Immigration NZ employees are National voters. Any reason why they wouldn't "own goal" a Labour government by ramping up immigration approvals? "B-b-b-b-b-but Labour promised"
Blood letting
Blackstone limited investor withdrawals in February from its Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT) fund to 35% of redemption requests, the fourth month in a row that BREIT has blocked the lion’s share of withdrawals because requests have far exceeded monthly limits.
The company said Wednesday that BREIT, now estimated to be worth $71B, fulfilled $1.4B out of a total of $3.9B in redemption requests, Reuters reported.
https://www.globest.com/2023/03/02/blackstone-reit-keeps-bleeding-despi…
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Lifestyle blocks always intrigued me. Having spent the initial part of my life on a farm, then became urbanised, they seemed to me at least neither one thing nor the other. Guess they must have had quite some escalation in costs, rates, water, environmental, all services in truth plus fuel to & fro. Obviously no longer the magnet for the old “Green Acres” seekers that once were.
And the older the current owners get, the less mobile they become, until one day neither of them (if there are 2 left) has a driver licence and realise it's a long way by foot to anywhere. The doctors and Countdown being the most crucial.
Life Sentence Blocks are fun when you're in your 30s/40s - as you hint at, when you don't know any better and have energy and cash to spare. But whatever it is that looks like a fun lifestyle - the horses, the flower farm, the 3 hole golf course, the contractor working the X hectares of 'your' grain, renovating that old run-down farm house - the novelty wears off, and the isolation eventually take its toll (another reason why there may not be 2 of you left!) The last 30 years have been easy for those who decided to move on. Capital gains recovered all the costs and more. But those days might now be behind us as the numbers above might suggest.
Sit in traffic for 50 years, live in a box, end up in a box.
No commute, not living on top of people, end up in a box.
That's where we'll all end up no matter what we do.
I guess the trick is to consider (was it Oscar Wilde who said?) "The meaning of Life is to pass the period between birth and death as painlessly as possible"
Yes the ageing of the occupants would be very influential wouldn’t it. What was an adventure, an exploit even, thirty years ago starts to weigh heavier. To refer in a sense to Wilde, as well, “ the tragedy of youth is that it is wasted on the young.”
... after an absence of 7 years I finally caught up with my young brother-in-law in the Philippines ...
It was a nice little brass plaque in the lawn cemetery : he was just 37 ... a reckless fellow who wouldn't be told to moderate his intake of ciggies & alcohol : Sigh !
Condolences. I have reached more than twice that. Looking back honestly, probably shouldn’t have.
... a few years ago my interest.co.nz sparring buddy from Kaikoura , Walter Kunz ( " Kunst " ) exited due to cancer ...
Even a keyboard cowboy who you've never personally met , you still miss them everyday around here ...
Met Walter and his wife in their studio and when our shared interest was revealed had a chat over coffee well before he passed. An interesting and pleasant man who I think of whenever I pass his old place.
Then we could all just sit in a vat of goo having nutrients fed to us through a tube, having never experienced any of life's ups and downs.
FWIW our rural property is closer to the local shopping area than are the new subdivisions on the far side of town. I dropped off my car to get new tyres at the local tyre shop, and walked home (on the flat) in 29 minutes. The supermarket is a 25 minute walk, the doctor much the same. We spent 4 years looking for just the right property, because we wanted to be able to see out our days here. Not all rural properties come with isolation.
I realise our situation is not typical.
29mins
luxury
and you lived a House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
Not sure it’s that cool in your 30s either. Your city mates are at the pub while your cleaning out the septic tank.
I like the idea but the commute and the hard work involved to then sit back and enjoy it might suck the joy out of it.
Not dissimilar to the 'Under the Vines' romantic dream.
Anyone whose had a lifestyle vineyard knows the planting, pruning (careful of those shears on the fingers!), spraying, mowing, netting, picking, packing, shipping grapes etc etc etc - a lot of it in the cold, rain or baking sun fighting off the wasps - somewhat diminishes any joy of sitting on the veranda at the ends of season and drinking a bottle of your own last year's vintage that's probably cost you 500 bucks per bottle to produce.
Or just lease it to someone else and they can do that, and throw you a few free cases a year.
You can do it as hard or as easy as you want.
Be very careful to differentiate between lack of sales, and lack of lifestyle blocks, or satisfied owners.
RNZ make this mistaken assumption often - usually accompanied by 'the market' comments (a house is primarily a home, not a 'first step on the property ladder'.)
Seems to me the owners are staying put. Not silly, given how the world looks.....
Surely the smarter play is to specialise your skillset so you're only capable of doing a narrow field of tasks, and be totally dependent on faceless corporations for all of your nutritional needs.
Brilliant
Maccas / KFC / Pizza Hut / Taco Bell ...
... when you die from their poisonous " foods " , the preservatives in them will embalm your body and save on the funeral expenses : Yay !
LSB close to Auckland are incredibly expensive. You can find places in behind Kaukopakopa more reasonable but less commutable. I don't think poor eco warriors can afford them any more.
That said you can argue that boats are a waste of money as well...... but I love being on the water.
I'm sure you can assuage your conscience by saying its your hobby and justify your expenditure that way.
We bought ours to be out of the hustle/bustle of town, but we are still within 15-20min drive of the CBD.
We love the opportunities it gives our young boys to live (in my opinion) a true Kiwi childhood spent climbing in trees, fishing in creeks or simply just digging a hole.
It is somewhat of a myth that they are 'life sentence' blocks. We have been intentional with ours so we don't spend anymore time than the average townie does with maintenance.
https://data.linz.govt.nz/layer/112726-hawkes-bay-010m-cyclone-gabrielle-aerial-photos-2023/
LINZ have just released the detailed aerial images from Hawke's bay (taken on the 19th mostly, so a few days after the cyclone). If you zoom in to the ranges further inland you can see where all the silt came from. Easy to blame the foresters for the slash (and rightly so), but stripping erosion prone soils of trees is pretty dumb too
Questions should also be asked about the stopbank failures..
Note:zooming might not work on some mobile devices
Interesting link. Thank you.
Megan Woods trumpeted last November, the proposed development of 700 sections at Maraenui, Napier were going to be fine because despite that area having been a known flood plain, under 9ft of water two years ago for instance, all that had been mitigated. It was all hunky dory. Guess the potential of stop bank failure was not considered. Anybody from up there that can say how that land actually fared during the cyclone?
I'm hard put to think of anything she's done/said, that shows intelligent understanding of the predicament we are facing.
Doesn't mean she's not capable of it....
Maraenui not hit badly. Te Awa was worse
Te Awa is mostly a new development too. But of course that is going to be the case, all the obvious land is taken.
Great find, thanks. I can see my house from here!
No no no, you don’t understand, when you build houses on and clear forests from the most erodible soils on the planet (the area is a Seabed lifted in an earthquake) and then it pours with rain and everything erodes away, that is CLIMATE CHANGE, nothing to do with incompetent planning or land use, it’s all Fonterra and Air New Zealand’s fault you see. Some idiotic brainwashed children I see on the news say it is so, so it must be true. I feel quite sorry for these kids, they are going to waste the best years of their lives (when they should be partying it up before they get ready for a serious working life) believing in the climate scam, which is just a deflection from the incompetence of public officials. Really sad, and quite pathetic.
The impacts on climate, just tell you how planet-forcing we have become as a species.
And it's not the biggest part of the combined predicament we face - so your denial is not going to get you what you want (which I presume is short-term personal indulgence?).
“short term personal indulgence.” now that in itself early on, is a front runner for euphemism of the year, and it might well be wire to wire.
Yeah. I get it. I’m the problem because you and your homies can’t provide any evidence whatsoever, and you believe walking to work and driving electric cars will somehow change the environment. That’s ridiculous. Laughable even. If climate change was a threat, a man made threat, smart people would be worried and would find a solution. Currently they are not, only people with nothing better to do, and the gullible believe these myths.
"smart people would be worried and would find a solution"
They are and they have but numbskulls just don't want to accept it.
That earthquake was almost 100 years ago and people have been living in that seabed ever since.
I doubt there are many places in NZ that aren’t prone to flooding/earthquakes/volcanic.
That area is particularly new (compatibly speaking) and the most vulnerable. Go talk to an insurer. It’s well known.
With life expectancy at 90, assuming you work from 20 to 65, you will work for as many years as you don't. So why do people think paying probably on average about 20% tax for those 45 years should be enough to pay for their retirement, education, health, rest home, roads, police, jails, etc. And then they complain they pay too much tax and want a tax cut!
Maybe NZ super made sense when people started work at 16 and died at 65, but it really doesn't now.
I think they need to make kiwisaver compulsary at 18 and tell 19year olds there will be no super, make it 10% or like the aussie system.
Definitely. All of the skills those at the top of the heap have developed in pulling the housing ladder up, need to be put to use in other areas, so those who had the audacity not to be born at the right time can get what’s coming to them.
That would leave the poor and unemployed and those sentenced to caregiving a handicapped family member even poorer in old age and those with well paid jobs wealthy in old age. I prefer Super with its socialism - a flat rate for everyone. (Not quite true since if I divorce my wife we would both get more).
Tell those 18 year olds to pay for their own super and their parents super?
'like the aussie system' =Income/means tested.
I'd be keen but don't think you will find any politician here willing to implement it.
Not sure about these bullish life expectancy predictions with the massive rise in obesity and other ills:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-64831848
It is evidence that you should focus on retirement savings as a priority because you will spend longer using those resources than you ever spend paying for a house.
Not really true, a typical buyer today will be saving for a deposit for 5+ years, and taking a mortgage on a 30 year term, so 35 years total. A 65 year old today is projected to live to 91, so a retirement of 26 years. It would take a phenomenal increase in longevity for the average case to exceed 35, you'd need to be predicting the typical 65 year old to live to 100
I hate to say this, but having seen the NZ health system up close, I fear we are going to see survival ages decrease over the next 10-20 years...... Personally I am after quality of life, I have no interest in quantity.
A few beers tonight - definitely increasing my quality and arguably decreasing my quantity.
.. me too . .. also , after a craft beersie or two , rapidly decreasing my ability to hit the triple 20 on the darts board ...
It's not what the craft beer freaks drink but... how come I bought Budweiser for $20 a dozen, given the low level of our peso and the cost in shipping etc and the locals want to rip me off for close to this for Haagen. Bud also 355ml not 330 !
Data from Statistics NZ today shows that the number of births in 2022 were there lowest since 2003.
The greatest calamity facing our country and government won't give it a dollar of funding, there won't be any cabinet meetings and no one will protest about it.
It's the best news of the day.
We should be cheering from the rooftops.
The environment says "Yes", the economy says "No."
The government and the RBNZ jacked the price of houses up 40%, and this is how the people respond? Bloody ingrates. It’s perfectly reasonable to raise a baby in a tent if need be.
Tent city baby!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk Every sperm is sacred?
The mighty Chris Joye is suggesting investments need an ROI of 9-10% to invest in over cash.
Unfortunately, illiquidity is creating extreme cognitive dissonance in asset pricing. With global cash rates rising above 4 per cent to 5 per cent, many highly rated government bonds offering 4 per cent to 5 per cent, bank deposits paying 4 per cent to 6 per cent, and bank bonds paying as much as 6 per cent to 7 per cent, the minimum hurdle rates for all other asset classes have soared.
To allocate to anything other than cash and high-grade bonds, one would want to be paid a risk premium of 4 per cent to 5 per cent, which translates into minimum expected returns of 9 per cent to 10 per cent.
Yet valuations in illiquid markets – such as residential property, commercial property, private equity, venture capital, high-yield debt and private loans – have been incredibly slow to adjust. And less sophisticated investors are continuing to allocate capital to assets trading on inferior yields to cash and government bonds with vastly higher probabilities of loss and little-to-no underlying liquidity, which makes scant sense.
https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/if-you-can-t-earn-9-10pc-yo…
Joye is one of those guys who my thinking really aligns with. Not many of them!
At first I read that as Joyce. I was about to throw a dildo at my screen.
... a clean dildo , or a " secondhand " one ?
Not sure, I pulled it out of the dumpster behind the sex shop after the floods.
Are you sure it’s not a Kūmara? Sexy and nutritious.
Well it doesn’t smell very nice
Kumara then ! ... used dildos do smell nice ...
I wish they would stop publishing sheeple-scaring stuff like this. I have a big stockpile of popcorn to enjoy and I'm counting on the silliness dragging out for years.
https://www.oneroof.co.nz/news/43173
This proves mortgage brokers are sellers first and might not have a clue about economics. I believe the rates will stay higher for longer. First of all is inflation is creeping back up worldwide. OPEC + has made a massive put call to underwrite the oil prices. Our account deficit is massive and require New Zealand to seek fyunding overseas at a premium. I would go for the 3-5 years fixed and pick out the lowest lender.
Bitcoin is down a sharp -5.2% today, now at US$22,308. If you know why, please note it in the comment section below
US senate enquiry into Binance,
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/02/senators-probe-crypto-exchange-binance-…
Misread your post - missed the gate bit - and thought we had another Hunt Brothers on the go!
US senate enquiry into Binance / Silvergate
Nope. These reckons are just reckons.
There are a large amount of BTC options expiring tomorrow. Also, a lot of leverage was built up on the long side in recent weeks. This move is yet another cleansing event. Rinse and repeat.
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