Welcome
fxmatters started as a newsletter about the NZ dollar and has now morphed into a repository of articles and opinions about finance in general. Updates are made regularly by economist Anthony Byett. Most material is available publicly.
- The links to the right are to various organisations that provide information about the NZ dollar and/or currencies and currency-related matters. Feel free to browse.
- Likewise there are various PAGES above with useful background material.
- Back copies of letters published through to June 2008 are available within the subscriber-only category ‘Letters’.
- The content of PAGES and POSTS can be searched via the box to the top right.
Background articles of interest recently
* NZ’s “retirement” age may need to rise to 70 by 2035 to ensure the current level of NZ super paid can be funded with approximately the same taxes raised per worker for super as has recently been the case (at $4000/FTE) Rashbrooke (pdf). This still leaves the extra aged health costs rising around $1000/FTE by 2045.
* International survey by RICS shows increasing expectations of distressed commercial property coming onto market in Ireland, Spain, Italy … but little change expected in NZ.
* Some interesting statistics: around 70% of large daily S&P500 movements – either up or down by more than 3% – occur when the market is running below average (as measured by the 200-day simply moving average) Mebane Faber; 90% of US equities are held by the top 10% of the population in terms of net worth while 90% of US households have most of their net worth in homes or in small business equity David Goldman
* Central banks, the world’s biggest gold holders, added 155 metric tons valued at about $8.1 billion to reserves in the first five months of 2011, according to the London-based World Gold Council – that’s about double the amount bought in all of 2010. Bloomberg
See Background articles for material from previous quarters.
