A review of things you need to know before you sign off on Wednesday; some late rate changes, fatter bank margins, vanishing investor demand, end of the housing shortage?, swaps rise again, NZD holds, & more

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today (or if you already work from home, before you shutdown your laptop).

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
SBS Bank has raised its floating mortgage rate by +50 bps to 6.79%, with the change for existing clients effective on September 5, 2022. A summary of all changes is here.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
Heretaunga Building Society raised all their TD rates. SBS Bank has raised their key savings account rates too.

FATTER MARGINS
The RBNZ has reported (S20) that the banking industry's net interest margin (NIM) jumped from 2.05% in March to 2.17% in June, its biggest quarterly rise since 2011. More detail on which banks benefited from this rising margin will be released tomorrow next week when their Dashboard data is released.

INVESTOR DEMAND VANISHING
Apart from Januaries (and the pandemic affected April 2020) new lending to investors in residential housing (C32) was the lowest in July for any other month since the RBNZ started reporting this data in August 2014. More here.

END OF THE HOUSING SHORTAGE?
Kiwibank economists now see house prices falling -13% by the end of the year followed by a 'slow' recovery. They also see the housing shortage 'disappear' over the next 12 months.

METAVERSE FOR INVESTORS
For investors, we see BetaShares launched the Metaverse ETF on the ASX this month. The market opportunity for ‘bringing the Metaverse to life’ has been estimated at nearly US$800 bln in annual revenue by 2024 according to Bloomberg. Variations on these new funds have RIPPL Reports in our Investment Funds resource.

NUCLEAR POWER RETURNS?
Trapped in current imports of oil and gas, Japan is set to order new nuclear power plant construction to shore up some energy security.

SWAP RATES HIGHER YET AGAIN
Wholesale swap rates are probably higher again today, still on those global influences we noted yesterday. There is curve steepening still going on. The 90 day bank bill rate is up +1 bp at 3.39%. The Australian 10 year bond yield is now at 3.65% and up another +4 bps since this time yesterday. The China 10 year bond rate is at 2.65% and little-changed and still near its lowest since May 2020. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now at 3.85% and up another +5 bps from this time yesterday, and now lower than the earlier RBNZ fix for this bond which was up +7 bps to 3.87%. The UST 10 year is now at 3.04% and up +2 bps from this time yesterday.

EQUITIES FLAT
On Wall Street, the S&P500 fell -0.2% today unable to get any traction. Tokyo is down -0.5% in Wednesday trade so far. Hong Kong is down another -0.9% and Shanghai is down -0.7% in early trade today. The ASX200 is up +0.7%, and the NZX50 is flat in late trade. 

GOLD FIRMS
In early Asian trade, gold risen +US$9 to US$1,746/oz.

NZD ON HOLD
The Kiwi dollar is unchanged from this time yesterday, still at 61.9 USc. Against the AUD we are also unchanged at 89.8 AUc. Against the euro we are little-changed at 62.2 euro cents. That means our TWI-5 is now at 71 and also little-changed.

BITCOIN UNCHANGED
Bitcoin is virtually unchanged from this time yesterday at US$21,310. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest at just on +/- 1.8%.

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

Keep abreast of upcoming events by following our Economic Calendar here ».