The debasement trade gathers momentum

Kia ora,

Welcome to Thursday’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 it is all about the 'debasement trade" today - Trump debasing US public policy resulting in a rush to gold, a jump in US Treasury yields, and a fall in the greenback. Equities and cryptos are falling.

In the US overnight, there was another good rise mortgage applications, largely on the back of a rush of refinance activity as 30 year mortgage rates eased.

However December data for pending home sales took an unusually large dip from November to be -3.0% lower than year ago levels.

In Canada, producer prices actually fell in December, unexpected because a small rise was anticipated. That puts them +4.9% higher than year ago levels, the slowest rise since August.

In Indonesia, they reviewed their policy rate overnight, leaving it at 4.75% as expected.

In Europe, the European Parliament has suspended the approval of a key US trade deal agreed in July in protest at Trump's demand to take over Greenland. Both Trump and some of his cabinet are at Davos, and in full arrogant insult mode.

In Australia, the Westpac–Melbourne Institute Leading Economic Index inched up 0.1% in December from November to +0.42%, following the no-change in the previous month. The recent uptick is led by commodities and an improved homebuilding outlook. But the December rise was less than expected. A year ago its was +0.25%, so nearly a doubling since that tame benchmark.

We should perhaps also note that cocoa prices have fallen sharply today, back to US$4400/tonne and the same level as two years ago. You may recall they reached US$12,250/tonne in April 2024 at the height of its surge.

The UST 10yr yield is now just on 4.28%, unchanged from this time yesterday. 

Wall Street is in its Wednesday session with the S&P500 recovering +0.3% but the earlier much larger recovery gains (over +1%) seem to be fading. The S&P500 has fallen a net -1.8% in the past two days, so far. It's the same for the Nasdaq which is now back with a small loss today, down -2.2% for the same two days. 

The price of gold will start today at US$4843/oz, and up another +US$93 from yesterday and a new record again. Silver is lower at US$93.50/oz and off its record high.

American oil prices are up a bit more than +50 USc from yesterday at just on US$60.50/bbl, while the international Brent price is unchanged at just under US$65/bbl.

The Kiwi dollar is holding from yesterday, still at just under 58.5 USc. Against the Aussie we are down -30 bps at 86.4 AUc. Against the euro we are up +20 bps at just on 50 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today just on 62.5, and unchanged from yesterday and still its highest since early October.

The bitcoin price starts today at US$87,927 and down -2.0% from this time yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest at just on +/- 1.4%. And we perhaps should note that the $TRUMP memecoin has plunged more than -90% from its peak a year ago, burning its adherents bigtime.

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

Kia ora. I'm David Chaston and we’ll do this again tomorrow.