Market’s verdict: Winston who?

Immigration key area for Winston Peters

New Zealand’s sharemarket has been completely untroubled by the current political uncertainty, touching record highs this week. But the prospect of tighter immigration policy being a feature of a new coalition Government poses some risks for the economy, say financial analysts.

On the Economy Hub this week Salt Funds Management’s Matt Goodson and JBWere’s Bernard Doyle looked at the nonchalance of the market and the broader risks.

“It reflects the fact that we’ve had MMP for 20 years. We know how coalitions work and we know they won’t happen overnight and I think markets are just biding their time,” Doyle said. “It would still be a surprise if we have a three-way leftleaning coalition and you would probably get some reaction, but until then its why overly worry.”

The NZX, which hit another record on Wednesday, has risen every month for the past nine months, said Goodson.

“The key thing driving it is cheap money all around the world, coming to New Zealand and seeking our attractive yields,” he said.

The market had seen roughly 20 per cent per annum growth for the past five years and, excluding bubbles, would be one of the strongest and most consistent bull markets New Zealand had ever seen, Doyle said. “And whatever this is, it isn’t a bubble.”

But as an investor you had to ask, what are the chances of it being repeatable? he said.

“Even putting the politics to one side, nothing is cheap here, valuations are going higher and higher, the economy’s capacity is very tight, so it’s hard for growth to accelerate, much easier for it to decelerate, those things suggest to us that we’re probably at a point where this performance is hard to repeat.”

While markets were at the mercy of bigger global forces it was possible that if uncertainty persisted then it could start to have an effect on the real economy as businesses postponed i nvestment decisions and consumers put off buying cars or property, Goodson said. Immigration stood out as the policy issue where Winston Peters’ involvement in the next Government could have an impact, he said.

Immigration was a key plank of Peters’ policy and had underpinned recent GDP growth.

GDP growth had been “quite negligible on a per capita basis”, Goodson said. “So when you’re getting 2 per cent population growth with a lot of that from immigration it could have particular effects on sectors like the housing market with links through to the stockmarket via the building material stocks and particularly the retirement village operators.”

Latest statistics were already showing net migration gains levelling off and the worry was that it was a very volatile source of growth, Doyle said. “It can double and halve very, very quickly and that’s without policy uncertainty — which we could be going

into.”