Investors embrace risk, regulators fret about risk

Kia ora,

Welcome to Friday’s Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand.

I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from Interest.co.nz.

And today we lead with news the ECB is warning investors aren't taking geopolitical risks into account nearly enough.

But first in China, we are getting reports that Beijing is developing a plan to save their housing markets and SOE developers by having the state buy huge numbers of unsold properties to boost demand. It is a sign of desperation. What wouldn't go wrong? Millions of properties partly occupied are surely likely to give an enhanced sense of rot in the sector, while enriching the developers. The future for such a policy looks bleak indeed.

Under the proposal, local state-owned enterprises would be asked to help purchase inventory from distressed developers at steep discounts using loans provided by state banks, Bloomberg reported on yesterday. Hong Kong shares of developers who will benefit from the "market clearing" zoomed again yesterday.

In the US, housing starts rose in April from March but are still lower than year-ago levels, and that year-ago standard is not high. Previously we have seen stronger residential building consent levels but they are falling on a prior month- and prior year-basis too. The new home construction sector is falling back into line with the general real estate resale market with tepid demand at best.

But that weakness is not reflected in their labour market. The actual number of jobless claims fell last week to 197,000 which was a slightly smaller fall than expected. It is interesting how expectations for rising labour pressure seemed to have turned around.

And the real state of retailing in the US can be tracked by the activity of their largest retailers - and the largest is Walmart. They said Q1-2024 sales levels were strong, growing far more than inflation.

Most serious analysts see the US economy expanding by +2% in 2024. But the AtlantaFed's GDPNow model reckons it is expanding nearly twice as fast as that, currently running at a 3.6% expansion, real.

In one region, the US Philly Fed factory survey turned from a minor positive to a minor negative in May, basically because of a pullback in new orders. But also intriguing is the holding high of survey perceptions of business conditions. They seem confident about the future, very confident.

Industrial production in the US was little changed in April, taking seven of the past twelve months as expansions, five as contractions. But most of the expansions, as small as they have been, are in the more recent half. And that has eaten into the year-on-year deficit, so it is now only -0.4%.

In its latest Financial Stability Review, the ECB says investors are likely to be jolted by negative election surprises in 2024 that will weigh on financial stability. They reckon investors are blind to the sudden shifts in sentiment that geopolitical tensions can drive. And the extra spending they are having to do on the security from is likely to put future strain on European public finances they noted.

In Australia, the April labour force data saw the jobless rate rise to 4.1% from 3.9% in March. (NZ was 4.3% in March.) That means 593,000 of their 14.9 mln labour force are without work. Full-time employment fell by -6100, part-time employment rose by +44,600. It was tougher in NSW where full-time employment fell -16,300 and part-time employment only rose +13,100.

We have previously noted that financial markets had started pricing in a chance of interest rate rises from the RBA. A lowish chance, admittedly. But now we can note that they seem to have abandoned those bets - even though the consensus seem to be that the short-term Aussie Budget won't be especially inflation-friendly.

More globally, the copper price has breached US$11,000 and an all-time high and now we are into the crazy world where short sellers are being squeezed, and having to buy their way out of the frenzy which bids up the price further.

You may recall we reported a sharp rise in bulk cargo freight rates last week. Well, it was temporary and they have now fallen back to the prior week's level now. But containerised cargo rates are still rising as fast as they did last week, up another +11% this week and are now double year-ago levels. All this is driven by outbound-from-China rates roiled by the persistent Canal and security problems.

The UST 10yr yield is now at 4.38% and up +2 bps from this time yesterday. 

The price of gold will start today down -US$10 from yesterday at US$2379/oz.

Oil prices are up +US$1 today to just under US$79/bbl in the US while the international Brent price is up +50 USc, now just on US$83/bbl.

The Kiwi dollar starts today with a slight easing from yesterday at just on 61.2 USc. Against the Aussie we are up at 91.6 AUc and a new one month high. Against the euro we are unchanged at 56.3 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today just on 70.2 and little-changed from yesterday.

The bitcoin price starts today at US$64,946 down a very minor -0.2% from this time yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest at +/- 1.6%.

You can find links to the articles mentioned today in our show notes.

You can get more news affecting the economy in New Zealand from interest.co.nz.

Kia ora. I'm David Chaston. And we will do this again on Monday.