Powerful forces roil China and the US

Economy Watch

Kia ora,

Welcome to Tuesday’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.

Today we lead with news of powerful forces at work in both the US and China.

All eyes today will be on the opening of the Shanghai equity markets after their week-long holiday. Many think outsized gains are likely. Over that same period the Hong Kong index rose +12%. And those changes will be in anticipation of the yet-to-be announced fiscal stimulus program that Beijing has signaled. There are high expectations. But investors are probably sensing they can't lose with the central bank's logic-changing ¥800 bln (US$115 bln) capital market support measure in place.

But with 'buy-the-rumour-sell-the-fact' mentality of many investors, who knows what will happen. Some fund managers will feel they don't want to miss a unique profit opportunity, others are more sceptical the economic fundamentals are not getting proper attention.

China can afford to throw money at their issues. Their foreign exchange reserves rose by +US$28 bln to US$3.316 tln (¥23 tln) in September, slightly more than expected. And it built to its highest level since late 2015. Their gold holding rose in value too, but only because of the rising price.

Japan's leading economic index, which was expected to rise slightly, in fact fell and by quite a dip. In fact it was their lowest reading since 2020. They will be hoping this is a rogue result.

European retail sales were expected to rise in August and they did, coming in +0.8% higher in 'real' terms than a year ago for the Euro Area. But that undershot expectations of a +1.0% rise. For the wider EU bloc, things were slightly better.

Germany factory orders were weak in August, down -3.9% from a year ago. But that was a correction from the +4.6% rise in July.

In the US, Hurricane Milton strengthened into a monster Category 5 hurricane as races towards Florida’s west coast. Cat 5 storms are rare. Given what Helene did recently (Cat 4), residents have begun to flee inland in large numbers. Hopefully it will lose strength before it hits Florida. It is still deep in the western Caribbean Sea about 1000 kms from landfall.

After a +US$25 bln rise in July, American consumer debt was expected to rise another +US$12 bln in August. In fact this expected data wasn't available when we published, so we will update this item when it is released.

The UST 10yr yield is now at just on 4.02% and up +5 bps from yesterday.

The price of gold will start today at US$2644/oz and down -US$9 from this time yesterday.

Oil prices are up +US$2.50 at just on US$77/bbl in the US while the international Brent price is still just on US$80.50/bbl.

The Kiwi dollar starts today at 61.2 USc and down -40 bps from yesterday. Against the Aussie we are still at 90.6 AUc. Against the euro we are down -30 bps to 55.8 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today still just over 69.3, and down -30 bps from yesterday at this time.

The bitcoin price starts today at USA$63,601 and up +1.3% from this time yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest at just on +/- 1.7%.

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 tomorrow.