ANZ Truckometer for September, comes in at a 1.7% gain for the month

  • prior -0.5%, revised from -0.6%

ANZ's 'key points' on today's result (boldings are mine)

  • Heavy Traffic Index lifted 1.7% in the month of September and 1.2% in the September quarter as a whole
  • This suggests Q3 GDP growth in a 0.5-1.0% q/q range, which would be an improvement on the lacklustre rates seen in the first half of this year
  • Light Traffic Index rose 2.5% in September, and is up 0.8% on a quarterly basis
  • After a period of consolidation, this result restores the strong upward trend that had been evident since mid- 2013, boding well for momentum into next year, in the absence of any untoward events
  • While we need to be wary of reading too much into one month's result, which has of course followed months of subdued readings, the rebound in both indicators is welcome. It is not just the Truckometer that has lifted of late. We have now seen a range of our proprietary indicators (business confidence, consumer confidence, commodity prices) trough and show a degree of uplift.

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ANZ on this indicator:

  • The ANZ Truckometer is a set of two economic indicators derived using traffic volume data from around the country.
  • Traffic flows are a real time and real-world proxy for economic activity - particularly for the New Zealand economy, where a large proportion of freight is moved by road.
  • It represents an extremely timely barometer of economic momentum.
  • The ANZ Heavy Traffic Index shows a strong contemporaneous relationship to GDP, while the ANZ Light Traffic Index has a six month lead on activity as measured by GDP.
  • Using statistical techniques we optimise the ANZ Truckometer indexes to map to quarterly GDP growth.

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This indicator tends not to impact to any great extent immediately on the NZD. The kiwi is down just a few tics since release.