Benchmark rates and commodity prices fall

<p>Kia ora,</p><p>Welcome to Tuesday’s Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand.</p><p>I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from Interest.co.nz.</p><p>And today we lead with news we are seeing falls in some key commodity prices (like oil and copper), and a sharpish retreat in benchmark interest rates today. That is probably all due to rising risks in the Middle East.</p><p>But looking ahead, this short week we will be looking at the second estimate of the US Q3 GDP growth rate which will come on Friday and is widely expected to be very much better than the initial estimate. Their economy was expected to be slowing down by now; instead it is revving up. They will also release data for their PCE Price index, and personal income and spending, followed by durable goods orders and PMI survey data for October. We will also get American housing market sales data.</p><p>It will be a peak week for Q3 earnings reports, with releases by majors like Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, 3M, Coca-Cola, GM, and Spotify.</p><p>There will be central bank interest rate decisions this week from the ECB, Bank of Canada, and Turkey. And we will get Australia's Q3 inflation rate, some European data, and the GDP growth rate in South Korea.</p><p>Overnight, the US Chicago Fed's tracking of their <a href="https://www.chicagofed.org/research/data/cfnai/current-data" target="_blank"><strong>national activity index</strong></a> moved up from a negative to a positive, but only just, suggesting the US is expanding at its long-run average now.</p><p>In Canada, <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231020/dq231020a-eng.htm?HPA=1" target="_blank"><strong>retail sales</strong></a> stagnated in September, according to preliminary estimates. That follows a small decrease in August.</p><p>In Ottawa, their main banking regulator has <a href="https://www.osfi-bsif.gc.ca/Eng/osfi-bsif/med/Pages/basel24_nr.aspx" target="_blank"><strong>told</strong></a> lenders to h