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ANZ-Roy Morgan NZ Consumer Confidence fell 11pts to 80.3 in April, a three-year low, down 20pts in two months. Inflation expectations jump to 6.6%. Personal finances weakest since mid-2008. Retail outlook deteriorates sharply.

Summary:

• The ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence index fell 11 points in April to 80.3, its lowest reading in approximately three years, having dropped 20 points in the two months since the Middle East conflict began
• The future conditions index fell from 96.7 to 85.9, its lowest in two years, while the current conditions index dropped from 83.1 to 71.9, the weakest since October 2023
• Perceptions of current personal financial situations fell 11 points to a net -31%, the weakest reading since mid-2008, driven by the cost of living rather than income declines, as the oil shock has not yet meaningfully hit household incomes
• The net proportion of households viewing now as a good time to buy a major household item, considered the survey’s best retail indicator, fell 11 points to -25, the weakest since September 2024
• Perceptions of the economic outlook over the next 12 months fell 23 points to -48%, the lowest in three years; the five-year-ahead measure fell 2 points to +3%
• Two-year-ahead CPI inflation expectations jumped 0.9 percentage points to 6.6%, against a backdrop of petrol prices up approximately 30% year-on-year and food price inflation running at 4% to 5%
• House price inflation expectations eased from 3.8% to 3.2%
• Only a net 3% of respondents expect to be better off financially this time next year, down 7 points
• The oil price shock is identified as the clear driver, affecting household budgets directly through petrol prices and indirectly through broader concern about job security and economic conditions
• The widening gap between consumer inflation expectations of 6.6% and firms’ wage expectations of 2.5% is flagged as a key concern, alongside the noted drag on sentiment from expectations of OCR hikes

New Zealand consumer confidence has slumped to its lowest level in approximately three years, registering a sharp 20-point fall in the two months since the Middle East conflict began to drive energy prices higher. The ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence index dropped a further 11 points in April to 80.3, a reading that puts current sentiment on a par with the difficult conditions of 2022 and 2023, a period New Zealand retailers will not recall with any fondness.

The driver is unambiguous. Petrol prices are up around 30% year-on-year, and the squeeze on weekly household budgets is showing up clearly across the survey’s key indicators. Current conditions fell to 71.9, the lowest since October 2023, while the forward-looking index dropped to 85.9, a two-year low. Perceptions of the broader economic outlook over the next 12 months fell a striking 23 points to a net -48%, the weakest read in three years, as households grow increasingly worried about what sustained high energy prices mean for jobs and the wider economy.

The most alarming single reading may be the personal financial situations measure, which tracks how households feel relative to a year ago. That fell 11 points in April to a net -31%, its weakest since mid-2008. Critically, the oil shock has not yet had time to feed meaningfully into household incomes, meaning this deterioration reflects outgoings rather than earnings. The pressure on budgets is coming through the cost of living, and it has further to run.

For retailers, the picture is bleak. The net proportion of households viewing now as a good time to buy a major household item, the survey’s most reliable retail spending indicator, fell to -25, its lowest since September 2024. That reading, taken alongside the ANZ’s separate Business Outlook survey (also an ugly negative confidence number) showing retail sector respondents as the most pessimistic cohort on future activity, points to clear downside risk for spending data in the weeks ahead.

Two-year-ahead inflation expectations jumped nearly a full percentage point to 6.6%, the highest in several years. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand does not set prices and so does not target consumer expectations directly, but the growing gap between households pricing in 6.6% inflation and firms anticipating wage growth of just 2.5% is a tension that will be difficult to ignore. Predictions of OCR hikes are themselves adding to the gloom, creating a feedback loop between policy expectations and consumer mood that complicates the RBNZ’s already difficult path.

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The scale and speed of the confidence collapse is notable: a 20-point fall in two months is not a gradual deterioration, it is a shock response. The direct read-across is to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, which now faces a widening gap between consumer inflation expectations at 6.6% and firm-level wage expectations at 2.5%. That divergence will complicate the OCR outlook, particularly given that predictions of rate hikes are themselves being cited as a further drag on household mood.

For retailers, the current personal financial situations index at its weakest since mid-2008 is a serious warning. Combined with the separate ANZ Business Outlook showing retail sector respondents as the most pessimistic on future activity, the downside risk to near-term spending data is material.

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.

• Japan intervened in the FX market — report
• Trump: Iran is dying to make a deal with us
• US initial jobless claims 189K vs 215K estimate
• US Q1 advance GDP +2.0% vs +2.3% expected
• US March PCE inflation +3.5% y/y vs +3.5% expected
• Canada February GDP +0.2% vs +0.2% expected
• ECB rate decision: No change, as expected
• ECB’s Lagarde: Most measures of longer term inflation stand around 2%
• Pakistani officials say they expect new Iran proposal this week – report
• AI infrastructure spending is the largest non-war project in human history
• Euro rises as report says the ECB very likely to hike in June
• Trump considers plan to deepen the blockade on Iran with allies – report

Markets:

• S&P 500 up 1.2% to record high
• Russell 2000 up 2.1%
• WTI crude down $1.82 to $105.07
• Gold up $73 to $4615
• US 10-year yields down 2.2 bps to 4.39%
• JPY leads, USD lags

The big question today: Were the moves position squaring ahead of month end, or a better view on the war?

Many of the big moves were reversals of the trend this month, or at least of the past week. That’s a move that looks like a ‘peace’ trade but there wasn’t any (public) indications of a breakthrough on Iran, or even talks. There are reports that Iran is readying another proposal and the usual rumors about peace but overall it was quiet on the Iran front.

The big news in earlier trade was the surge in the yen. There was some pointed and harsh talk about intervention beforehand but it wasn’t clear if it was actually intervention, a rate check or the strong words that caused the drop. A report from Nikkei confirmed it was intervention but the pair traded mostly sideways in New York.

That wasn’t the case for the euro as it initially declined on the ECB decision and press conference because there wasn’t the expected strong hawkish bias. However the usual ‘ECB sources’ reports later were much more hawkish and the euro rallied. That was combined with broad USD selling and helped push the euro as high as 1.1740.

The Bank of England held rates but the pound solidly outperformed the euro as it rose a full figure in the North American session.

The commodity currencies were also strongly bid as they climbed alongside a record run in stocks. Gold also turned around after yesterday’s selloff and climbed to $4616 in choppy trade.

Maybe the best sign that something more-fundamental was driving the move was the decline in Treasury yields, which fell 5.7 at the 2-year tenor.

Overall, it was the best month for stocks since 2020 as the AI trade was a full-throated barn burner but note that Sandisk and Western Digital are lower after the close post-earnings and a trio of Mag7 names that reported yesterday were also lower despite a red-hot tape.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

China begins 5 days of holidays today, back on May 6.

From Japan we get Tokyo area CPI for April. I’ll have more to come on this separately. Yen traders will be grappling with the echoes of the intervention (1, 2) that drove USD/JPY down from 160.

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.

I don’t know how seriously you can take these kinds of comments.

• Iran in very bad shape
• Reiterates that they obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities
• Iran cannot be nuclear
• Iran drone and missile factories are down significantly
• Touts new stock market highs
• The blockade is incredible, Iran is now not getting any money from oil
• No one knows who Iran’s leaders are
• Now one knows what’s happening in talks except himself and a couple others
• I don’t know if we need to break the ceasefire with Iran

The market likes what it’s hearing and we’re seeing some further small bids in equities. The S&P 500 is at a record high, up 1.1% to 7216.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

This is a strange one:

Al-Arabiya cites a Channel 12 report, which is an Israeli TV station but says that Israel is preparing to announce the failure of negotiations with Iran

It’s strange because Israel isn’t negotiating with Iran, the US is. Israel is negotiating with Lebanon so maybe something is lost in translation along the way.

I don’t think anyone knows what Trump will announce (including perhaps Trump himself) so I would be skeptical of this report, but it’s making the rounds.

What is clear is that negotiations don’t appear to be making progress, though often it happens where you don’t see it. WTI crude oil is down $2.45 to $104.41 after rising as high as $110.93 earlier today so that’s a good sign.

Russian media reports that in a phone call with Trump, Russia’s Putin pointed out that if the US and Israel resume military operation, this would inevitably lead to extremely adverse consequences not only for Iran and its neighbours, but for entire international community. He also stressed that a ground operation on Iranian territory would be particularly unacceptable and dangerous.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani leaks are starting again and say they expect a revised Iranian proposal to end the war by the end of the week. We’ve certainly heard that kind of thing before but let’s hope it’s for real this time.

That’s from MS Now who reports this:

Two Pakistani officials in Islamabad with direct knowledge of the talks between the U.S. and Iran told MS NOW they expect a revised Iranian proposal to end the war by the end of the week.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity around the talks, said they will then share Iran’s proposal with U.S. negotiators and push for an in-person meeting between both sides early next week.

Both the U.S. and Iran are “focused on diplomatic solutions” to bring the war to an end, they said.

Maybe the sides aren’t that far apart.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

The S&P 500 has extended today’s gain to 38 points, or 0.5%. It has been 13 points lower at the lows as the market digests five big earnings reports from late yesterday and one from this morning. The reactions in those names:

• MSFT -5.5%
• META -8.9%
• GOOGL +7.7%
• AMZN -1.4%
• QCOM +16%.
• CAT +10.1%

The tech names are truly a mixed bag but I think the chip names are actually more important this point. The hyperscalers are incinerating cash but they increased capex again in the quarter and that’s a good sign for the $700 billion that’s flowing downstream from it.

For the broader market, I wonder if Caterpillar wasn’t a stronger signal.

“While there is increased uncertainty due to geopolitical events and elevated energy prices, our end markets have been resilient.”

At the same time, CAT itself cited AI capex as a big driver for its earnings, particularly in power generation.

Another notable name to report was Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and shares of that company rose 6.7% in a positive view on the consumer.

“Consumers… remain very healthy, supported by excess cash, strong employment trends and a continued preference for consuming experiences over purchasing things,” an Jason Liberty, Chairman and CEO. “We are not turning the corner. We have turned the corner… the moderation that we saw has turned.”

Even on the war, he said the consumer only briefly dipped.

“The softer booking trends lasted for a few weeks, but we have now turned a corner,” Liberty said.

Today we get earnings from Apple, which has generally stayed out of the AI race but could stand to benefit from it if there is a meaningful change in on-device usage. Though some argue that AI could take us away from our phones.

As for the stock market, there is somewhat of a lift today from dipping oil prices, a lower USD and declining Treasury yields. Those are typical moves around optimism that the war is ending, though the headlines today don’t exactly support that.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

I often write that the industrial revolution was the biggest thing to happen in human history but we might be re-writing history right now.

I want to underscore the amount of spending that’s going into AI right now because the numbers are almost unfathomable, something I touched on yesterday.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta collectively plan to spend $725 billion on capex in 2026, up 77% from last year’s record $410 billion. Those numbers are accelerating. OpenAI will also spend $100-$125 billion and Anthropic might be in the $50 billion range. In China, they’re likely to be spending somewhere in the $100-$200 billion range and then you can add in another $100-$200 billion in costs for power, the grid, cooling, gas turbines, substations and land.

All in, that’s somewhere in the $900 billion to $1.3 trillion range for this year alone, and no one is indicating any slowdown from there (at least not yet).

These are truly staggering numbers that I want to put into perspective:

• That’s around double the cost of the entire 35-year project of building the US interstate highway system, which took 35 years (inflation adjusted)
• Slightly below the entire UK government budget and roughly double Germany’s federal budget
• About 1.5x Japan’s budget
• Larger than the GDP of every country except the USA
• About 4x larger than the multi-year Apollo project to put a man on the moon (inflation adjusted)
• Apollo spending peaked at 4.4% of Federal spending, AI capex right now is equivalent to 15-20% of US government spending

Here is the big one: The estimated total spending on WWII in today’s dollars was $4-7 trillion, globally for the duration of the war. At this pace, AI spending will match that. For the US alone, peak WWII spending was $1 trillion per year in today’s dollars and US AI spending alone this year is close to that. Now as a percentage of GDP it’s much smaller but the sheer scale of it is the same.

In terms of private capital, there has never been anything like it, nothing close.

…and the application of it all is: Replacing human thinking.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

The White House is preparing markets for a prolonged squeeze on Iran. Under the plan being weighed, the US would maintain its naval blockade on Iranian ports while leaning on allies to raise the cost of Tehran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a senior administration official told the AP. Trump is reviewing multiple diplomatic and policy options, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The backdrop is ugly for energy markets. The strait has been effectively blocked for two months, US gasoline averages have hit $4.23 a gallon — the highest in nearly four years — and Brent surged to $120 per barrel on Wednesday. Roughly one-fifth of global oil and LNG normally moves through the passage, and the disruption is now feeding through to broader supply chains, though some of the missing oil has been redirected through a Saudi east-west pipeline.

Tehran’s offer, conveyed via Pakistan, would reopen the strait if Washington lifts the blockade and ends the war — but parks nuclear talks until after a settlement. CNN reported Trump is unlikely to accept, with sources saying lifting the blockade without addressing Tehran’s nuclear programme would erode US leverage. Trump confirmed as much to Axios, saying the blockade is more effective than the bombing and that Iran is “choking like a stuffed pig.”

The math favours patience on both sides, for now. Iranian crude loadings have collapsed from 2.1 million bpd pre-blockade to 567,000 bpd, per Kpler, but Rapidan Energy estimates Tehran has at least 26 days of storage runway and is prepared to hold out for months.

Some US government officials continue to believe that Iran risks long-term damage to its oil reservoirs in a shut-in scenario but I struggle to believe that thinking. If it comes to that, Iran could simply pump the oil into the desert rather than risk its long-term prosperity.

Trump met energy executives Tuesday to discuss cushioning consumers and the market hated that. The longer the blockade holds, the more the crude curve has to price a structural premium — not a transient one.

WTI is down $1.49 to $105.44 today after rising over $110 earlier.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

Every beginner trader goes through the same cycle.

If you’ve spent any time learning to trade, you’ve probably done this: you opened your charting platform, added a moving average, then a second one, then an RSI, a MACD, maybe some Bollinger Bands for good measure, and ended up staring at a chart that told you absolutely nothing.

That experience is nearly universal among beginner traders. And it’s almost always what sends them down a path of mounting confusion, second-guessing, and eventually, avoidable losses.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the problem isn’t lack of effort. It’s that most beginners are taught to trade using tools designed to describe what price already did, rather than learning to read what price is actually doing in real time.

The real language of markets is price itself.

Every candlestick on a chart is a record of a decision made by real buyers and sellers. The patterns they form, the levels they respect, and the structures they build over time reveal the underlying psychology of the market, if you know how to read it.

That’s the foundation of technical analysis done properly. Not a collection of indicators. Not a set of shortcuts. A systematic, objective framework for understanding where price has been, where it’s likely to go, and, critically, where your risk is if you’re wrong.

Introducing Essentials of Technical Analysis

Essentials of Technical Analysis, led by analyst and trader Giuseppe Dellamotta at investingLive Academy, is designed precisely for traders who are ready to move beyond the noise and develop a professional approach to reading markets.

In just three hours, the course covers the full framework: identifying bullish and bearish market structures, focusing on an objective understanding of price action, applying proven technical analysis tools to find high-probability entry and exit zones, and implementing strict risk management rules, the discipline that separates traders who last from those who don’t.

The course spans four structured lessons.

• The first reframes what technical analysis actually is: not a prediction machine, but a probability-based approach to managing risk in the face of uncertainty.
• The second dives into chart patterns, teaching students to classify formations as reversal signals, continuation shapes, or range-bound zones.
• The third introduces the most essential indicators, presented with a strong emphasis on using fewer tools, not more.
• And the final lesson maps out the transition from theory to real-world execution, with an emphasis on back-testing as the cornerstone of objective self-improvement.

The course includes 23 videos (plus a bonus video with practical back-testing using all the concepts presented in the course), three progress checkpoints, and a graded challenge, all structured to move at a pace that sticks.

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Technical analysis is not about predicting the future. It’s about stacking probabilities in your favour, managing your risk rigorously, and making decisions based on data rather than gut feeling. Essentials of Technical Analysis teaches you to do exactly that, and it starts with learning to read a chart the way the market actually speaks.

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About

This course is delivered by Giuseppe Dellamotta, Market Analyst at investingLive. Giuseppe is a market analyst and trader specialised in global macro covering FX, equity, bond, and commodity markets. His approach isn’t shaped by traditional academia but forged through real-time market experience and a hedge fund level training. He specializes in identifying macro trends early, often taking contrarian positions that challenge the consensus. His goal is to offer independent insight and identify signals through the noise. He’s been a prominent financial markets analyst and writer for ForexLive.com, now rebranded as investingLive.com.

This article was written by investingLive at investinglive.com.

• Prior was 2.8%
• PCE m/m +0.7% vs +0.7% expected
• Prior +0.4%
• Full report here

Core PCE (excluding food & energy):

• Core y/y +3.2% vs +3.2% expected
• Prior was +3.0%
• Core m/m +0.3% vs +0.3% exp
• Prior +0.4%

Consumer spending and income for February:

• Personal income +0.6% vs +0.3% expected. Prior month -0.1% (revised to 0.0%)
• Personal spending +0.9% vs +0.9% expected. Prior month +0.5% (revised to +0.6%)
• Real personal spending +0.2% vs +0.1% prior (revised to +0.3%)

The inflation figures are all as expected, so there’s nothing to see there. With Core PCE now well above 3.0%, you can see why some FOMC policymakers wanted to drop the easing bias.

The Fed has been missing its 2% target since 2021 and the reluctance to adopt a clear hawkish bias kept the market in a dovish reaction function. Financial conditions never really tightened enough to bring inflation sustainably back to target. Inflation continues to run around 3% and the US-Iran war is expected to add more upward pressure.

We also got the US jobless claims data at the same time and well, they are pointing to a reacceleration in the labour market. The US Employment Cost Index for Q1 has also surprised to the upside coming in at 0.9% vs 0.7% in the prior quarter.

Following all the data release, US interest rate futures slightly increased odds of a rate hike by the end of 2026.

This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at investinglive.com.

• Final Q4 GDP was +0.5%
• Consumer spending (PCE): +1.6%
• GDP final sales (excluding inventories) +1.6% vs +0.3% prior
• GDP price index (GDP deflator): +3.6% vs +3.8% expected
• Core PCE (excluding food & energy): +4.3% vs +4.1% expected
• Business investment (nonresidential fixed investment):

Contributions to GDP in percentage points:

• Government +0.30 vs -1.03 prior
• Net exports -0.40 vs -0.08 prior
• Inventories +0.35 vs +0.28 prior
• Fixed investment +0.70 vs +0.28 prior
• Services +1.25 vs +1.45 prior
• Goods +0.10 vs -0.02 prior

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.0% annualized pace in Q1 2026, a notable rebound from the soft 0.5% print in Q4 2025 — but the headline flatters a release that warrants closer scrutiny on both the growth and inflation sides.

The composition tells the real story. Real final sales to private domestic purchasers — the cleanest read on underlying demand — rose 2.5%, up from 1.8%. That’s encouraging. But peel back the layers and the quarter looks heavily distorted by trade flows and one-offs. Both exports and imports surged, with computers, peripherals, and parts leading the way on both sides of the ledger. That’s the fingerprint of pre-tariff front-running, not organic demand. Equipment investment got a similar lift from information processing — read: the AI capex story is still alive, but some of this is inventory being pulled forward through customs.

Government spending bounced back sharply, led by federal nondefense compensation. Anyone reading this as a fiscal impulse should pause: this is largely the mechanical reversal of the Q4 shutdown drag. Take it as noise, not signal.

The inflation numbers are where this release gets uncomfortable. Headline PCE jumped to 4.5% from 2.9%. Core PCE printed 4.3% versus 2.7% prior. That is a serious hot read, and the gap between gross domestic purchases prices (3.6%) and PCE (4.5%) suggests tariff pass-through is finally hitting consumer baskets. The Fed cannot ignore a 160 basis point jump in core in a single quarter, regardless of how the tariff legal saga shakes out.

The takeaway: 2.0% growth with 4.3% core inflation is not a goldilocks print — it’s stagflation-adjacent. The IEEPA refund saga and tariff distortions will keep muddying the data through Q2. Markets cheering the growth number should look twice at the deflator.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

• Prior week 214K revised to 215K
• Iniital jobless claims 189K vs 215K estimate
• 4 week moving average 207.5K vs 211.00 last week
• Continuing claims 1.785M vs 1.815M estimate. Prior 1.808M
• 4 week moving average of continuing claims 1.797M vs 1.809M
• The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending April 18 were in New York (+2,885), California (+1,590),
  Tennessee (+1,562), Kentucky (+1,179), and South Carolina (+1,115),
• The largest decreases were in New Jersey
  (-4,280), Pennsylvania (-2,742), Virginia (-1,528), Wisconsin (-1,248), and Indiana (-1,150)

The

This article was written by Greg Michalowski at investinglive.com.