China talks carbon neutral, acts carbon intensive

Kia ora,

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

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

Today we lead with news the bitcoin price seems to be in free fall this morning.

But first up today, we need to note that the US is on holiday, a four-day Thanksgiving weekend. And all eyes will be on the Friday and weekend retail sales levels which will set the tone for retailing through to the New Year holiday season. Of course the pandemic, and the shift to online retailing are both trends being watched closely.

But that hasn't stopped Disney cutting a further 4000 people from its theme park workforce, taking the total reduction to more than 32,000.

In Singapore, industrial production took a very worrying retreat in October, suggesting that the stellar gains in September were not repeatable.

In China, coal prices are surging after Australian imports were blocked. They are up +12% year-on-year to near record highs. This comes at a time of rising electricity demand, not only from rising industrial activity, but the onset of winter too. And it comes at a time, China must make critical decisions if it is to reach its loose carbon neutrality goals. They keep on building coal-fired power plants when they know they should be closing them.

And China's rare earth prices are also surging amid growing demand as the economy recovers and from rising concerns that China could impose restrictions on rare earth exports as a retaliatory measure responding to new US Biden sanctions relating to human rights issues. Iron ore prices are rising sharply too.

Wall Street is on holiday today. Overnight, European markets were little-changed, but London another -0.4%. Yesterday Tokyo closed up +0.9%, Hong Kong was up +0.6%, and Shanghai was up a more modest +0.2% and arresting their prior day's big drop. The ASX200 ended up +0.7% and the NZX50 Capital Index was up +0.5%.

The latest global compilation of COVID-19 data is here. The global tally is 60,642,000 and a +574,000 rise overnight. 

China is worrying about coronavirus spread in its winter season. "Everything becomes a cold-chain in winter" and their tracing suggests transmission risk via cold-chain imports of food has been their main risk. Winter then spreads the risk.

The largest number of reported cases globally are still in the US, which rose +169,000 overnight to 13,173,000 and at their higher pace of infection. 

In Australia, they are not getting any major resurgence. 

The UST 10yr yield will start today little-changed at 0.88%. 

The price of gold is has changed little overnight, down US$2 today to US$1809/oz.

Oil prices have slipped today, and have given up yesterday's US$0.50 rise so they are back at just under US$45/bbl in the US, while the international price is now just under US$48/bbl.

And the Kiwi dollar has stayed high 70 USc this morning but has stopped rising now. Against the Australian dollar we are firm at 95.1 AUc. Against the euro we are also holding at 58.8 euro cents. That means our TWI-5 will start today still at 72.6. We were last at this level in March 2019.

The bitcoin price has fallen very sharply overnight after flirting with a record high in the past two days. But is now at just US$16,550 having lost -US$2,350 since this time yesterday or more than -12%. But it is only back to where it was ten days ago.

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

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

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