A review of things you need to know before you sign off on Tuesday; no retail rate changes, few Kiwi victims of Latitude cyber attack, SME's self-confident, trade deficit unchanged, swap rates fall again, NZD dips, & 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
Specialist community lender Paraloan raised its home loan rate to 5.19% for 3 years fixed.

TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
None here today.

'SMALL PERCENTAGE' OF LATITUDE CYBER ATTACK VICTIMS ARE KIWIS
Latitude Financial, which says it's battling a well-organised, malicious and ongoing cyber attack, says it has engaged "all relevant" New Zealand and Australian authorities. A NZ Latitude spokeswoman says "a small percentage" of the estimated 330,000 customers and applicants who've had personal information such as copies of drivers licences, drivers licence numbers and copies of passports or passport numbers stolen, are New Zealanders. The Department of Internal Affairs says more than 1300 New Zealanders have had their passport details stolen, Newshub reports. Latitude has a help page for those impacted by the cyber attack here.

'WE'LL BE FINE, BUT WE DON'T THINK YOU WILL BE'
More New Zealand small businesses think the economy will shrink than grow in 2023 despite most expecting to their own business to grow. That’s the surprising finding from a new survey by CPA Australia. Their 2022-2023 Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey found just 40% of Kiwi businesses surveyed expected the national economy to grow. This was the second lowest result among the 11 Asia-Pacific economies CPA Australia surveyed. However, 66% expect their own business to grow in 2023. Last year, 56% were expecting growth. The number of small businesses here that reported growth in 2022 (60%) was well up on 2021 (33%). 

TRADE DEFICIT HOLDS
Stats NZ said we had a trade deficit of -$714 mln in February, little changed from the -$715 mln in February a year ago. Goods exports went up +0.8% to $5.2 bln from higher dairy exports. Imports were up +0.7% to $5.9 billion, led by oil products.

SPLURGING ON KOREAN IMPORTS
In February we got a boost to our trade surplus with China. But for the full year, the surplus with China is now only +$640 mln, barely a quarter of what it was in the February year in 2022. Our situation with Australia is also getting worse, with a merchandise trade deficit of -$800 mln, up from -$250 mln the prior year. With the US our annual surplus is only +$100 mln, down from +$626 mln. With Japan were are little changed in a big deficit (-$963 mln). And with Korea we are in a huge deficit relationship with them. For the year we sold them $2.7 bln of goods but bought $6.3 bln from them (mainly cars and machinery). That is an annual deficit of -$3.6 bln, our largest with any country.

SERVER DOWN
We were going to report on the February credit card transaction and balance activity for February, but the RBNZ's servers are down that handle these updates. We will update this item later if the data comes through by 4pm, otherwise tomorrow. (OK, that data is through now and we are working on the analysis now. In the meantime, this is the RBNZ analysis for February.)

TURNING THE WRONG WAY AGAIN
The proportion of credit card balances that incur interest rose in January from December to 52.8%. It is usual for this to happen 'after Christmas'. But the rise this year was notable in one respect - it was the biggest rise since 2007. Still in 2007, the proportion incurring interest back then was 67.3% so we have actually made quite a bit of progress in those 16 years avoiding credit card interest.

DEGRADED SERVICE
Global shipping giant Maersk is to cut back its shipping service to New Zealand, degrading it to its Polaris service that re-routes much of it via Australia for full connections. Maersk made super profits during the supply chain problems of the past few years but container shipping rates have moved sharply against them in the past few months and they are now walking back their coastal service promises. Regional ports will feel the pinch, not to mention exporters.

A LOGIC TRAP FOR THE GREEN SHIFT
Research IP's useful RIPPL Sluice summary is pointing to some UBS research that shows China has a lock on the production of clean energy metals at the moment. This isn't necessarily where those materials are mined however, but where they are refined. China does the dirty work so we can buy 'clean energy' products. It's going to be hard going trying to convince China to de-industrialise but keep supplying us our green products.

SWAP RATES TURN DOWN FURTHER AS BOND YIELDS DIVE
Wholesale swap rates are probably down further today. However, the real action in swap rates comes near the close. Our chart will record the final positions. The 90 day bank bill rate is unchanged at 5.13% and now only +38 bps above the current OCR. The Australian 10 year bond yield is now at 3.23% and down a sharp -12 bps from this time yesterday. The China 10 year bond rate is little-changed at 2.88%. And the NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now at 4.18% and down another hard -15 bps from yesterday and the same as the earlier RBNZ fix at 4.18% which was down another -12 bps from yesterday. The UST 10 year yield is a little higher today from this time yesterday at 3.50% with a +2 bps rise but it has been volatile in between.

EQUITIES MOSTLY MOVE UP
In New York, the S&P500 ended up +0.9% in some sort of confidence vote - but what for is a puzzle. Probably that the Fed won't raise rates on Thursday morning (NZT). Tokyo has today off (Vernal Equinox) in a temporary reprieve after yesterday's big drop. Hong Kong has opened up +0.9% probably on the same sentiment as New York. Shanghai has opened up +0.3%. The ASX200 is up +1.3% in afternoon trade in a good recovery. These are such different signals to the ones the bond markets are delivering. But the NZX50 is down -0.3% near the end of trading and not getting any halo gains.

GOLD FIRMS
In early Asian trade, gold is up +US$12 from this time yesterday at US$1981/oz.

NZD SLIPS
The Kiwi dollar has eased from this time yesterday, now at 62.3 USc and down almost -½c. Against the Aussie we are a tad softer at 93.1 AUc. And against the euro we are down -½c to 58.1 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is down to 70.3 and a -60 bps drop in a day.

BITCOIN HOLDS HIGH
The bitcoin price has moved sideways again today, now at US$27,957 and up the minor +0.6% it fell yesterday. Volatility has remained moderate today at +/-2.4%.

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

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