A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; Kiwibank cuts mortgage rates, wholesaling strong, impressive vehicle sales levels, swap rates rise, NZD down

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
There were no changes today. But we did hear that Kiwibank will be reducing their 3, 4 and five year fixed rates on Monday, and the 4 and 5 year rates will be best-in-the-market.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
There were no changes today.

RENA ECHO
The application for the resource consent to abandon the wreck of the Rena will be going to the Environment Court for a decision.

WHOLESALING STRONG
Both wholesale sales and wholesale inventories were strong in the Q2 data released by StatsNZ today. This is one of the last pieces of the GDP puzzle, and along with the construction spending data we got earlier, these aspects will not hurt the GDP result.

STRONG VEHICLE SALES
New vehicle sales data for August was released today. It was strong, with the commercial vehicle side especially strong. More new commercial vehicles have been sold in the first eight months of 2014 than were sold in the full twelve months of 2012. SUV sales mow make up 30% of all car sales. Details of used imports aren't yet available but are also expected to be impressive when released early next week.

WHOLESALE RATES
Swap rates changed today in a steepening manner. The one year swap fell -1 bps, for 2 year, they were up +1 bp, were up 2 bps for 3 and 4 years, up +3 bps for 5, 7 and 10 yrs . The 90 day bank bill rate was unchanged at 3.70%.

OUR CURRENCY
Check our real-time charts here. The NZ dollar fell today against our main trading partners and is now at 82.8 USc, now at 88.7 AUc and the TWI is at 78.8.

You can now see an animation of this chart. Click on it, or click here.