Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.
MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
SBS Bank ended its 4.19% one year 'special', replacing it with a 4.45% rate.
DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
SBS Bank raised its 9 month term deposit rate to 3.85%.
TRADE BALANCE DEFICIT
We had a -NZ$3.2 trade deficit in goods in 2016, slightly less than the -$3.5 bln in 2016. Part of that was because we ended the year with smaller deficits, principally because we are paying less for crude oil. Exports for agricultural products are weak. But remember, we do run surpluses for international trade in services, and they are growing because of tourism and education, so the impact of the current account deficit is far less than today's goods data suggests.
HOLIDAY EXPLAINER
It is an Anniversary day holiday in Auckland, Northland and Nelson today. It is also the start of Chinese New Year (also known as Spring Festival). In China the next week is essentially a public holiday giving everyone nine consecutive days off.
INSURER QBE ON THE BLOCK
A German newspaper is reporting that insurance giant Allianz is "in talks" to make a takeover offer for Aussie iinsurer QBE.
WHOLESALE RATES SLIP
In abridged trading today, and taking the lead from Wall Street on Friday, local swap rates fell and flattened today. They are down -2 bps for two years, down -2 bps for five years, and down -3 bps for ten years. The 90 day bank bill is unchanged however 1.98%.
NZ DOLLAR STAYS HIGH
The Kiwi dollar rose over the weekend against the greenback, has held that during today and is now at 72.7 USc level. On the cross rates, we are still high at 96.2 AUc, and at 67.7 euro cents. The TWI-5 index is now at 78.3. Check our real-time charts here.
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Daily exchange rates
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4 Comments
It's a real shame the RBNZ discontinued the mortgage approvals series. Sure it wasn't perfect data but it was perhaps the only good leading indicator. It was clear from October approvals that November and December were going to be very quiet months with too little credit floating around to mop up the stock of listings.
Now we're starting to get a picture of how many properties are hitting the market for the February/March selling season but it's hard to gauge how much domestic credit will be out there on the hunt to bid up properties.
I understood Stats NZ always compiled this data and the RBNZ was duplicating it's publication until it didn't.
New Zealand’s external debt position was $148.5 billion (58.0 percent of GDP) at 30 September 2016, up from a revised $141.4 billion (55.9 percent of GDP) at 30 June 2016. Read more and more
Brian Gaynor authored a background summary/explanation a while back. Read more
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