Here's my summary of the key events overnight that affect New Zealand with news of some big shifts in both technology, and banking.
But first, the overnight dairy auction brought some bad news with prices falling -3.5% overall and down -5.5% for the key wholemilk powder product. That makes it three declines in a row and that adds up to a total -6.8% drop in overall prices. Analysts will be reworking their payout forecasts, but one thing they won't be doing is raising them. We are now back to overall prices we had at in April 2017. The one bright spot is that the NZD has fallen as well, meaning the change in NZD from the last auction is a tiny +0.3% gain in local currency. But that still leaves prices back to the same as in April 2017 on that basis. All-in-all, not a great auction result.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Prime Minister Ardern basically acknowledged that with a small concession on her housing position, New Zealand will sign up to the TPP, saying there are significant net benefits for New Zealand.
China has announced that it is holding its foreign currency reserves above US$3 tln with data for October published today. That revealed a tiny rise to US$3.1 tln, the ninth straight month of tiny rises. The clamp on currency outflow is holding.
Retail sales in the eurozone rose +3.7% in the year to September, extending a strong run of growth.
And the ECB has revealed that relocation by London banks to within the eurozone is becoming a bit of a rush-for-the-exits. 50 London banks are working on plans, 20 have already applied for eurozone banking licenses.
In Pheonix, Arizona, self-driving car company Waymo - a unit of Google - has a full live test of its cars operating at Level 4 autonomy, sharing public roads with human-driven cars and pedestrians, with no one at the wheel able to take over in case things don’t go as planned. It is a major milestone, presaging a real revolution for car travel. Expect it to spread quickly. Early adopters will be Uber, taxi companies, and rental car companies. It may even be an answer to New Zealand's problem with tourists unfamiliar with our right-hand drive system.
In New York, the UST 10yr yield is down -1 bp today, now at 2.31%.
The price of crude oil has slipped slightly today and is now just under US$57 / barrel, while the Brent benchmark is just under US$63.5.
The price of gold is marginally higher after a sharp drop after we reported yesterday's level, now at US$1,272 oz. The bitcoin price is now at US$7,008, down -1.2% on the day.
The Kiwi dollar is little changed again today. We are now at just under 69 US¢. And on the cross rates we are at 90.3 AU¢, and against the euro at 59.6 euro cents. That puts the TWI-5 index still at 72.4.
If you want to catch up with all the changes yesterday, we have an update here.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
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