Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand with news technology doesn't seem to be the answer to our lagging productivity problems.
First up, the big overnight news is that a "faulty channel file" from Crowdstrike took down Windows computers everywhere, including in New Zealand. Outages were widespread, including for many bank services. It was a spectacular own-goal and not a malicious strike. We have more details here. And our review shows how you can recover if you were affected..But be careful; within hours scammers had launched new domains hoping to trick users into 'response scams'. Crowdstrike made its name fixing tech problems. Now it has caused a doozy. The echoes are lingering and may do for some time yet.
And the situation isn't going to do anything for tech company valuations generally. Crowdstrike's share price is down -11% today, down -18% for the week.
Interestingly, China seems to have escaped the issue, largely due to its self-sufficiency policies. But it has hit Hong Kong.
A new research note by the New York Fed is pointing out that since the GFC, American factory productivity improvements have stalled. Tech has been no saviour to this sector. Prior to that, large firms built innovative advances. But since even the leading firms haven't got productivity gains. They call the change a 'mystery'. Even shifting low-wage production offshore didn't have the effect of raising it. Nor competition, it seems. And all this come as their employed workforce hit record highs.
In Canada, their expected May retreat in retail sales after the strong April gain came in deeper than expected. If it wasn't for good car sales, it would have been much worse. June is expected to be -0.3% lower too. Now their year-on-year gain is only +1.0%, much less than their inflation of +2.7%.
Canadian producer prices rose +2.8% in the year to June, the same as for the year to May.
Japanese inflation stayed at 2.8% in June, well above their central bank's upper target range. It has been consistently above 2% since April 2022. Food prices rose 3.6% in June although that was lower than the May 4.1% rate. Energy prices were up 2.4% but that is somewhat artificially high because fuel subsidies ended in May. These levels are marginally lower than analyst expectations.
China is in the middle of its internal policy meetings, the Third Plenum. As suspected, little real reform seems to be on their agenda. Just more of a 'security is everything' attitude, and a turn inward. Of course, their words are the opposite in an Orwellian way.
The UST 10yr yield is now at 4.24% and up another +5 bps from yesterday, up the same for the week. The key 2-10 yield curve inversion is little-changed at -27 bps. Their 1-5 curve is less at -72 bps. And their 3 mth-10yr curve inversion is less at -113 bps. The Australian 10 year bond yield starts today at 4.37% and up +8 bps from yesterday. The China 10 year bond rate is little-changed at -2.27%, locked down by Beijing. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now at 4.40%, and unchanged. For the week it is down -15 bps however.
Wall Street is down another -0.7% on the S&P500 in Friday trade putting it -2.3% down for the week. Overnight, European markets closed their Thursday trade down about -0.7%. Yesterday Tokyo also ended down a minor -0.2% after Thursday's big drop. Hong Kong ended down -2.0% but Shanghai was up +0.2%. Singapore fell -0.7%. The ASX200 fell -0.8% and down the same -0.8% for the week. But the NZX50 ended Friday unchanged, which in the circumstances was ok. And it was up +1.6% for the week, which was much better than 'ok'.
The price of gold will start today down -US$57 from yesterday at US$2398/oz having moved well back from its recent high. That is -US$16 lower than its week-ago level.
Oil prices are more than -US$3 lower at just on US$78.50/bbl in the US while the international Brent price is just under US$82/bbl. And that is the same drop for the week. A potential Gaza truce caused this price to ease. The North American active rig count has been stable since September 2023, but if prices stay at these below US$80 levels, they are likely to fall too.
The Kiwi dollar starts today down -½c at 60.1 USc and more than -1c over the past week. Against the Aussie we are down more than -¼c at 89.9 AUc. Against the euro we are also down more than -¼c at 55.2 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at 69 and down -40 bps from this time yesterday, down -90 bps for the week.
The bitcoin price starts today at US$66,552 and up a strong +4.3% from this time yesterday. And that has shot up almost +14% from this time last week. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been moderate at just on +/- 2.9%.
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76 Comments
NZD fall is really helping investors with overseas investments (or BTC / Gold)
I was expecting massive crashes across all sectors. I'm hugely in the green today in NZD (and yes I have some Crowdstrike.... ouch)
Crypto stocks doing well. Coinbase +11%. Microstrategy +15%. All without the awful tax issues that pure crypto has.
Japanese company MetaPlanet on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (3350) is up 16% overnight and 705% YTD by simply adding BTC to their balance sheet.
To be honest, it doesn't make much sense to me. I've done my homework on the stock - their core business seems to be little more than a 3-star hotel management contract. It's simply a proxy for owning BTC. But BTC is not up 700+% YTD. I've done my research on the stock and the people behind it seem little more than opportunists. Foreigners are heading up the company, not Japanese. Looks fishy.
Kiwis took notice of Eric Watson's blockchain initiative as well as Dan Carter's NFT venture. Think the SEC is still hunting Watson.
As for MetaPlanet, I can't work that one out but good for those who took a punt. MicroStrategy completely different.
Year to Date returns:
WULF: +143%
IREN: +66%
CLSK: +64%
BTC: +51%
CIFR: +50%
WGMI: +41%
S&P 500: +16%
Russell 2000: +8.6%
ARKK: -7%
Can you honestly work any of those out?
Well I own IREN. Working it out like a typical stock valuation doesn't really count because their primary revenue for now is BTC (adding to the position in March was a great move), but when the data storage business grow, that will probably change. Sky's the limit IMO as IREN checks so many boxes for me.
So part of investing in these stocks is "chasing the narrative." Most people wouldn't touch IREN with a barge pole because they can't really connect with the intrinsic value of these companies.
Without knowing what is the exact cause of the issue it is a bit premature to trash CrowdStrike. - jumping to conclusions. The impression I gain is that the update was a definition update to the software (I stand to be corrected) and not an update to the end point software itself (deleting one file fixes the issue according to reports).
China is in the middle of its internal policy meetings, the Third Plenum. As suspected, little real reform seems to be on their agenda.
How does anyone listen to JD Vance repeating the same establishment lies about China and not understand this is just more of the same? All he's doing differently is blaming the "other side" for why China is surpassing the US, not confronting the lies convincing us that China's rise is a "threat" to the US in the first place. Link
Vance says what he knows Trump would say. Hardly a unique sort of opportunist and hardly the only president wannabe. Trump can only do four years so ideal to be the heir apparent. Gone from a vehement critic to an outright fan. As bw says on here “whatever it takes.”
Maybe, or are you missing the point? Is there a 'perpetual growth' myth associated with productivity too? But there has to be a limit, surely? Short of an all robotic work force, and who fixes/maintains the robots, human being are still required and present doing jobs that as yet cannot be done any other way. should there be some form of balance that is the target rather than improving productivity? For example a target of 95 - 98% employment and increasing efficiency? (How would efficiency be measured? Is it just another word for productivity?) And don't forget the finite limits on resources too, and how that applies to this.
Productivity improvements can take a few forms.
Producing the same volume for less input can be one way.
Or producing more.
Or something of higher value.
It's a hard thing to tackle, as mass manufacturing and globalisation has had a severely deflationary effect on many of our manufactured items.
I suspect, it's the race to the bottom on the quality scale that has stalled productivity improvement (i.e., sell more volume due to manufacturing for shorter product life).
Georgescu-Roegen identified this issue with modern economic thought in his 'Minimal bioeconomic programme' of 8 steps needed for a sustainable economy and planet;
1.The production of instruments of war, not only war itself, should be prohibited completely.
2.The underdeveloped nations must be aided to arrive as quickly as possible at a good (not luxurious) life.
3.Mankind should gradually lower its population to a level that could be adequately fed by organic agriculture.
4.All waste of energy by overheating, overcooling, over-speeding, over-lighting etc. should be carefully avoided, and if necessary, strictly regulated.
5.We must cure ourselves of the morbid craving for extravagant gadgetry (e.g., golf carts).
6.Consumers should reeducate themselves to despise fashion. Manufacturers will then have to focus on durability.
7.All durable goods must be designed so as to be repairable.
8.We must cure ourselves of going faster, to make something that goes faster, so we have time to make something that goes faster; ad infinitum. We must come to realize that an important prerequisite for a good life is a substantial amount of leisure spent in an
intelligent manner.
We have the ability to produce reasonably priced goods that could last a lifetime (or several). But there's no money in it.
I like the list. Ultimately the solution isn't economic, political or legal, it's psychological. Too bad our greatest intellects in that realm are employed working out how best to capture our attention and wallets.
Yes, some years ago I was doing some contracting to an importer of kitchen and sewing accessories ex-China. One of his most successful (i.e., high turnover/high margin) products was plastic veggie peelers. I mentioned this and he explained it was because they wore out/broke so easily :-).
Yes, it's a great list from a great mind in economics.
Jobless busyness: Xiaomi's robotic factory will make 10 million smartphones a year, apparently without any workers.
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/xiaomi-human-less-self-im…
BoJ trying to sell booming inflationary economy narrative to justify rate hikes that have no basis in what's actually happening there. Very definition of being impoverished, a completely fake recovery from the start. Except now we're seeing that someone has to pay for it. Link
There isn't a clearer, cleaner example of fake recovery and "boom" of past couple years than Japanese trade - both sides. It's entirely been a price illusion. It was never real (pun intended). Why does anyone need more workers when they make, sell, and move so much less stuff? Link
It can't be too far away until we all realise that adding 'whatever it is' to the National Credit Card can't go on forever. But sadly, it's probably further away than it should be, and so the inevitable is going to be so much worse.
"The UK borrowed £14.5bn in June, well higher than the £11.6bn predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Meanwhile, the debt burden remains at its highest level since the early 1960s at 99.5pc of gross domestic product, threatening to eclipse the total size of the economy."
There's a human instinct that adding more=better, be it sex, food, gadgets, clothes, etc. With the real irony being the more you add, the more you dilute. We now have so much abundance, it's kind of hard to appreciate anything.
It'd be nice if humanity could take a pause, determine what's actually important, and discard all the trivial wastes of time and resources.
Hard to see that happening, we're like a dog with 50 bones.
Old habits are hard to break. Or people are very easily corrupted.
The huge upshift in people spending ungodly amounts of money on recreational purchases over 2020/2021 was kind of eye opening. We just shut down the economy, and with a lingering pandemic the population went nuts paying over the odds for boats, bikes, campers, etc.
It's like the thought was there that life was for living, but instead of actually living it, people accumulated symbols of it instead. Is camping that much more fun in a $180k trailer than it is throwing a mattress in the back of a van/station wagon/tent?
I remember that halcyon "we're all in it together"period in mid 2020 very well. Until the election.
I also recall the harsh reality awakening that followed through 2021 when we realised how much we were being manipulated & lied to by an out of control Govt & bureaucracy hell bent on maintaining unbridled power, asleep at the wheel on delivery of the vaccine, preventing NZdrs from entering their own country & delivering their unmandated ethnostate.
I guess machinery and automation advance allow us to do much more work with less people, but there's not more work to be done, the resources are already used at full capacity so we just have spare people. Yet we add more people every week.
E.g. a mine that employed 30-40 people a shift about 30 years ago can now produce the same volume with just 7 people.
Ukraine and Britain have signed a loan agreement under which Kiev will receive £2 billion (about $2.6 billion) to buy weapons for the AFU, the Ukrainian defence ministry said. Link
Another addition to UK taxpayer liability without probable recourse to demand repayment.
Attrition of Russia's ability to wage war
https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/07/17/russia-needs-ceasefire-as-soviet…
https://cepa.org/article/what-next-after-russias-failed-kharkiv-offensi…
Russia is unable to mount an offensive to crush Ukraine to the point of collapse and Ukraine lacks the ability to mount an offensive to push Russia out of Ukraine. Stalemate. The war becomes a war of attrition.
Kharkiv was always a strange operation. You'd need a lot more resources to capture Kharkiv than Russia deployed, many think it was just a feint to stretch Ukraine's resources.
Ukraine is in a sticky place as they'll be wanting some battlefield success in the short term, but potentially they'd be better building up a decent force to throw at something.
Training and education plays some role. Some of it's mindset.
But we're also not all the same, and people have natural tendencies that make them better or worse at tasks.
I often wonder how much different our education system and workforce would be if we were able to identify those latent tendencies in children, and cater their education to it.
That is a key issue - not enough is done to help teens make good decisions about what their career should be - what is the best use of their talents This I would argue is failure of the education system and parents to identify in teens what their best skills are and what is the best career for those teens. .
We've fallen into a trap of preaching "do what you love", or "follow your dreams". Which sounds nice, but is often terrible for paying the bills. Instead, it should be more like:
- work out what you're good at
- develop skills and knowledge around that
- you get rewarded for your talents, and because you're good at something, you're likely to care about it more
Runs the risk of becoming a Gattaca like scenario.
A new research note by the New York Fed is pointing out that since the GFC, American factory productivity improvements have stalled. Tech has been no saviour to this sector. Prior to that, large firms built innovative advances. But since even the leading firms haven't got productivity gains. They call the change a 'mystery'.
Not just manufacturing:
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/us-construction-has-productivity-pr…
I suspect at least part of the answer is that the overall quality of applicants attracted by manufacturing and construction has declined due to wages, and other incentives, not keeping up with living costs. Increasingly sectors are competing for labour whether they are aware of it or not.
Possibly more "other incentives", and those incentives are intangible. We had a mindset shift over the 90s and 2000s away from manual labour, towards IT and office work. Makes sense on the surface, if Bill Gates became a millionaire through computers, you can too!
So now we have a shortage of manual skills, an interior plasterer can make more than an accountant or middle management, but it's a crappy job and no one wants to do it.
"Tech not adding to productivity"
Of course it isn't. Our Reserve Bank mandate absolutely forbids that from happening. If say productivity increased 20%, then you would expect to see a significant drop in the price of goods (20%?) as happens in sensible countries like Japan and China. However if that occurred here, it would be interpreted by the Reserve Bank as deflation, so they would lower interest rates to pump money into the economy. All that does is fuel speculative capital investment and props up unproductive and uncompetitive companies.
Increasing productivity induced falls in prices carry their own economic stimulation. People will buy more of the goods that are cheaper. The productive companies will benefit even more and the unproductive ones will suffer as they should. To survive the unproductive must increase productivity and lower prices to compete. That is the way that the free market is supposed to work. (Adam Smiths invisible hand at work) We seem to have forgotten this. What fools.
It is even worse, because when prices lower as a result of imports from other countries increasing their productivity; we have to lower interest rates and undermine our own productivity to maintain inflation in the band of 1-2%. China are well aware of this and I have heard comments from them saying that their lower prices are helping their customer countries manage inflation. I am sure that they were inwardly smiling at the fools in the west swallowing this and destroying their own economies.
The relative positive performance of the NZX 50 was driven by the weekly increase of Mercury, Meridian and Genesis share prices. The 50% increase of thermal generation last Thursday week before has pushed up wholesale pricing strongly because it looks like the market became now fully aware of the hydro situation (See: https://energy.nzx.com), the limited availability of gas, poor snow levels and the absence of wind. (See:https://www.meridianenergy.co.nz/power-stations/snow-storage).
Transpower comments in their latest report is saying that they expect the situation will ease with the expected spring/summer inflow but I am questioning that statement when the evidence is showing that there is bugger all snow. But the fact is that over the last 96 years only in 3 of them the combined hydro lake levels has been lower than this year. I believe interesting times ahead especially when the rain is not falling where they need it and the wind remains absent.
"All economic cycles share certain traits, for example, an unsustainable expansion of credit that leads to defaults and writedowns, or an unsustainable expansion of the money supply. Another theory holds that we don't repeat the most recent downturn, we repeat the one before that. In this scenario, we'll experience not a repeat of the stagflation 1970s, but the Crash and Depression of the 1930s."
Why the faux green energy transition will never happen.
"It takes on average almost three decades for a mine to go from discovery to production in the US, the second-longest in the world behind Zambia, a new analysis from S&P Global which was published this morning found. The global average is about 23 years."
Victoria Australia described as a woke neoliberal nightmare with living standards on verge of collapse.
Maccy B on the money as usual.
Former Treasury economist Stephen Anthony accurately summed-up Victoria’s predicament as follows:
“Victoria is on a suicide mission to record borrowing, just as global interest rates are about to hit 5%”.
“Potholes can’t get filled, emergency departments can’t afford clean linen, primary schools can’t fix heaters”.
“Things are about to get very ugly”.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/07/victorian-living-standards-on-…
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