Dairy prices stop falling

<p>Kia ora,</p><p>Welcome to Wednesday’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 the return of Wall Street from their long weekend holiday has been a quiet one, although Saudi Arabia greeted them back with a move that raised oil prices.</p><p>But first up, the overnight <a href="https://www.globaldairytrade.info/en/product-results/" target="_blank"><strong>dairy auction</strong></a> delivered a +2.7% rise in overall prices, headlined by the +5.3% rise in the WMP price. (From the last <a href="https://www.globaldairytrade.info/en/gdt-pulse-results/" target="_blank"><strong>GDT Pulse event</strong></a>, the WMP price rose +10% which is quite something.) This follows seven main events that recorded price declines overall so <a href="https://mcusercontent.com/b8a03199b83b7d3f31d0f2086/files/8db486df-33e4-ba4c-aa35-713fabfbee29/GDT_339.pdf" target="_blank"><strong>it isn't clear</strong></a> whether this breaks the declining pattern or not. At the same time the NZD fell too, so the rise at this event in NZD was more than +4.1%. Volumes were much higher this time at over 37,700 tonnes sold. Price movements for other commodities than WMP were modest.</p><p><a href="https://www.census.gov/manufacturing/m3/prel/pdf/s-i-o.pdf" target="_blank"><strong>US factory orders</strong></a> were expected to fall in July and they did - but not by as much as anticipated. And without aircraft orders they actually rise from June nicely. There had been four consecutive monthly gains in new orders prior with the last one being quite strong, so a settling was expected. Still, year-on-year these orders are still running lower than a year ago, down -1.4%, so pretty lackluster.</p><p>But there was <a href="https://www.the-lmi.com/august-2023-logistics-managers-index.html" target="_blank"><strong>an expansion in the US logistics sector</strong></a> in August, a shift up from