Market & Portfolio Update - July 2022

Prices of goods and services have continued to rise, with inflation numbers exceeding expectations around the world. In New Zealand we hit a 30-year high of 7.3%. Since this was released there has been a drop in a wide range of commodity prices, including oil, which has given hope to investors that we may be past the peak of inflation.

Central banks continue to raise interest rates in an effort to slow down business and consumer spending and to bring inflation back to more sustainable levels. NZ, Europe and US are amongst a long list of central banks that increased rates by another 0.50%-0.75% in the last month.

Labour markets remain historically tight, helping the perseverance of the economy. The most recent data shows unemployment in New Zealand at 3.3%, considerably lower than the 5% average that has been seen over the last 15 years.