Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news of struggling home sales around the world.
Going against the trend however, the level of sales of previously owned US homes rose sharply in May and by the most in more than four years, a sign the American residential-real estate market is rebounding after a slow start to the year. They were up by more than 6% in May over April. That is way more than the +1.4% increase expected. However that is still more than 5% below the level in the same month a year ago.
Japan’s production rebounded in May, indicating that manufacturers are riding out the recent sales-tax increase. But housing starts dropped 15% in May from the year before to just under 68,000 units, the lowest for the month in three years.
In China, new house building in Beijing has hit a 9 year low. That's a
In Australia, sales of new homes fell in May for the first time in five months, possibly a sign that their housing market may have peaked in this cycle.
Away from the housing news, euro area inflation came in at +.5% in May, unchanged from April. It is now a closely-watched metric because of the fears of deflation in the euro-zone.
And finally we reported yesterday that ANZ had sold Macquarie its interests in liquid bulk storage in New Zealand and Australia. Banks seem to have a fascination for directly owning commodities and the infrastructure controlling it. Well, today comes the news that ANZ is looking at buying up the physical commodity trading businesses of the big Wall Street and European banks as they retreat from the sector. Commodity speculation can have attractive profits. It is a new line for our local banks, however.
UST 10yr bond yields slipped again today and are now at 2.52%. The oil price is down and down more on the Brent benchmark than the US one Gold is sharply higher and is now at US$1,327/oz.
We start today with the NZ dollar slightly lower at 87.5 USc, 92.8 AUc. The TWI is now at 81.1.
If you want to catch up with all the changes on yesterday we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with today's event risk is by following our Economic Calendar here »
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