A review of things you need to know before you go home Thursday; no rate changes, retailers quiet, NZGB yields fall, Govt gets poll bounce, WMP futures rise, swaps slip, NZD holds

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes to report here today.

DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
No changes here either.

RETAIL SOFT
Total retail sales were $21.9 bln in the September 2017 quarter, up +5.4% from the same quarter a year ago. But the 13 weeks to September 2017 were quite compared to the June quarter which has the Lions tour and the World Masters Games. Slower car sales affected the latest quarter as well, but this is expected to bounce back in the December quarter.

LESS DEMAND BUT YIELD FALLS ANYWAY
The latest Government bond tender for $150 mln of 2033 maturities (16 years) brought a weighted average yield accepted of 3.13% which was down from 3.37% a month ago, and coverage ratio of 2.5 times which was down from 2.9 times last time.

HONEYMOON BOUNCE
Support for the new Labour/NZ First/Greens Government is up from October (which recorded a post election slide), with government confidence the highest it's been since the start of the Key era (which got a similar bounce when it was first elected), according to Roy Morgan Research.

UNEXPECTED BOUNCE
Following yesterday's weak dairy auction, it is something of a surprise to see the dairy derivatives market rise today for WMP futures.

DRYING OFF QUICKLY
There has been a noticeable drying off in almost all rural regions. As the chart below shows, it is much drier at this time than the same time last year, and drier than average for this time of year. However it is not yet as dry as in 2015.

WHO USES WHAT
In Australia, they published details of household water use today, saying it rose just +0.1% per person, but was up +3.0% overall accounting for population increases. They used a massive 1,900 gigalitres of fresh water in the 2016 year. As a reference, Sydney harbour holds 500 gigalitres. Agriculture was the biggest fresh water user, taking 9,600 gigalitres. All up, Australia used 16,100 gigalitres of fresh water.

MYTH BUSTING
Forgive me for repeating a comment I made earlier today about the myth that NZ is being sold out to foreigners. It is just not true. I looked at it detail here. You can get a similar conclusion by looking at the National Accounts that Stats NZ publish. Total international liabilities including foreign equity ownership as a proportion of all national net capital stock is now at its lowest point in almost 30 years. The "the foreigners are buying all our assets" story is one for the 1970s and early 1980s. It has long passed. The C/A deficit is low, under -3% of GDP, but people remember the -8% over a decade ago and think that continued. All the while, the assets of the country as a whole are growing quite quickly. Those national accounts show them up +4.5% in the latest calendar year, up +56% in ten years. To give you the scale, they are up +$260 bln in ten years. The growth in foreign ownership of New Zealand is only a small fraction of that, up +$150 bln including debt. If you just take the equity (ownership) portion of that, it is less than +$70 bln. So our total assets are growing much, much faster than foreign ownership of those assets. Even including debt where local owners borrow overseas debt, "we" are still ahead significantly. The "we've sold everything" claim is nothing but partisan myth by people with their memories stuck a few decades ago. It is just not true. In fact, the reverse is true - New Zealanders now own more of the nation's assets than at any time in the past 30 years proportionately, and more on an absolute basis, ever.

WHOLESALE RATES SOFT
Swap rates fell and flattened today, down -1 bp for 2 years and -2 bps for 5 and ten years. The 90 day bank bill rate is also lower, down -1 bp at 1.91%.

NZ DOLLAR FIRMS, BITCOIN UP
The NZ dollar has held on to its overnight gains at 68.7 USc. On the cross rates we are at 90.3 AUc and at 58.1 euro cents. The TWI-5 is still at 71.5. But the bitcoin price rose again today and is now just on US$8,213, up +1.4% today.

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