A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; mortgage rates inch up, equities lower, gold down, cheaper electricity, 1-5 swap curve dives lower, NZD active but unchanged

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

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
BNZ has increased its three year fixed home loan special by +10 bps to 4.49%, matching many of its rivals. The Cooperative Bank has raised its 18 month rate from 4.19% to 4.29%.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
Finance companies FE Investments and Mutual Credit both cut some term deposit rate offers today.

NOT DOWN LIKE WALL STREET
Equity markets are lower today almost across the board from Wellington, through Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo. The exception is Singapore which is positing gains. Wall Street ended the day down -1.8% (S&P500) although none of our time zone markets are down anything like than.

GOLD DOWN
The gold price is down -US$6 in Asian market trading today so far.

KIWI PROPERTY DEFERS BOND ISSUE, BLAMES BREXIT
Kiwi Property says it's deferring a planned retail bond offer "given the significant and continued market volatility following the United Kingdom’s referendum on European Union membership." Kiwi Property says it'll will notify the market if a decision to proceed with the offer is subsequently made. On June 24 Kiwi Property had said it was considering an offer of seven year, fixed rate senior secured bonds to New Zealand institutional and retail investors. Auckland Council also deferred a bond issues yesterday, blaming Brexit.

CHEAPER ELECTRICITY
Late June wholesale electricity prices are actually -14% lower in 2016 than the equivalent time in 2015. (This will be one reason many electricity retailers wanted to lock unsuspecting consumers into long term contract.) There is a sinking weight on these prices at the wholesale level as energy intensity reduces as our economy transitions away from wasteful energy consumption. At some point this will feed through to retail prices, firstly through the the challenger retailers.

BREXIT ON KIWISAVER
A large KiwiSaver provider has advised us that for someone with a $12,000 portfolio, the impact of the Brexit market wobbles will have reduced that portfolio value over the past 3 days (Thursday to Monday) by about $30 if you are in a Conservative fund, but about $200 if you are in a Balanced fund, and about $375 if you are in a Growth fund.

CURRENCY NOT INHIBITING EXPORTERS - AU VERSION
Even in Australia, their relatively high exchange rate is not inhibiting the growth in exporting. The Australian Bureau of Statistics today reported that the number of exporters grew about +9% in 2015, with similar growth between those exporting goods and those exporting services. (At the beginning of 2015 their TWI was at 63.9, while at the end of 2015 it was at 62.7.)

SWAP RATES PIVOT
Locally, the 1-5 rate curve dived today to just +5 bps (from what was already a very low +11 bps yesterday) as NZ interest rate swaps adjusted to the signals from Wall Street last night. The short end actually rose which the long end fell sharply again. Rates for three through ten years are now at record lows, and for two years we are just 4 bps from the record. NZ swap rates are here. The 90-day bank bill rate is up (not a typo) +3 bp, now at 2.37%.

NZ DOLLAR ACTIVE WITHOUT SHIFTING
Despite plenty of intra-day volatility, we are back to where we were at this time yesterday. The NZD is at 70.5 USc, at 95.4 AUc, and 63.8 euro cents. The TWI-5 is now just over 74.3. Check our real-time charts here.

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