A review of things you need to know before you sign off on Friday; FHBs active with high LVR borrowing, consumer sentiment dips, filled jobs rise, swaps up, NZD down, & 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/LOAN RATE CHANGES
Nothing to report.

TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
Westpac joined BNZ, Kiwibank and ANZ with higher term deposit offers, but not more than their main rivals. ASB lags however.

HOUSE PRICES MAY BE LOWER, BUT FHBs ARE BUYING WITH MORE LEVERAGE
Almost a third of first home buyers taking out low equity mortgages, but that easier access is raising the number of FHBs getting into a home of their own and it is back up to pre-Covid levels.

CONSUMER SENTIMENT NOT IMPROVING
The July ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index slipped slightly from June. It fell -2 points with the fall driven by the question of whether it’s a good time to buy a major household item, which fell from -27% to -39%. That doesn’t bode well for retailers. Meanwhile, inflation expectations bounced back almost completely from their sharp fall last month, rising from 4.3% back up to 4.7% – still trending lower, however, and well off their high of over 6% in late-2021.

THE PACE PICKS UP
The number of filled jobs rose to almost 2.4 mln in June, yet another new record high driven by fast-rising immigration. Analysts expect this quick trend rise to carry on till the end of 2023, and after than will flatten out as labour shortages ease. The rise in June was more than +9000 jobs from May. The rise from year-ago levels is +74,000 indicating most of the movement has happened recently.

PAYMENTS NZ PLEDGES DETAIL ON REAL-TIME PAYMENTS PLAN 'IN COMING MONTHS'
In response to a hurry-up from the Reserve Bank wanting a timeline for the enabling of real-time payments, Payments NZ says it'll be ready to share key elements of the design for "a next generation payments ecosystem grounded in real-time payments capability in the coming months." Payments NZ is the bank-owned company that governs NZ's core payments systems.

THE WAREHOUSE CFO TO JOIN ASB
ASB has named Jonathan Oram as its new executive general manager of corporate banking. Oram starts the role on October 24, subject to Reserve Bank non-objection. He's currently Chief Financial Officer at The Warehouse. ASB says Gregory Trotter will continue acting in the role until Oram joins.

'NORMAL' FOR AN EL NINO
NIWA's weather outlook for August sees wind speeds stronger than normal, particularly across the South Island and lower North Island, occasional heavy rainfall is forecast for the South Island and western North Island during the second half of August, temperatures will be near average for most but westerly winds will bring warm air into the region from Australia at times, and soil moisture levels will be near or below normal for most. See the detail here.

FALTERING
In Australia, cost of living pressures are being felt in their retail trade, with retail sales unexpectedly falling in June and by -0.8% which was enough to mean that there was no gain in retail trade in Q2-2023. And they were only up +2.3% fromn a year ago. This means, because they have inflation at 6.0% there are 'real', volume reductions in retail turnover there.

AUSSIE PPI RISES SLOW
Australian producer prices rose at just a +2.0% rate in Q2-2023 from Q1. Year on year they were up +3.9%, which is a fast slowing from the +5.2% in Q1 on the same basis. That confirms the recent shift lower.

NO NEW GAS FOR NEW HOUSES
Staying in Australia, Victoria, which has the highest use of residential gas in Australia, said it will ban all new homes that require a planning consent, from connecting to gas.

EXPECT ANOTHER +25 BPS
The RBA will review its policy rate next week again (Tuesday) in its monthly schedule and analysts are coming to the expectation another +25 bps rise will be announced, taking their policy rate to 4.35% which will be its highest since 2012. In 2023 it is abandoning the monthly treadmill, going to a six week schedule just like the RBNZ's practice.

SWAPS RISE
Wholesale swap rates are probably firmer 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 up + bp at 5.67% and now +17 bps above the 5.50% OCR. The Australian 10 year bond yield is up +9 bps at 4.04%. The China 10 year bond rate is unchanged at 2.68%. And the NZ Government 10 year bond rate is up +8 bps from yesterday at 4.77%, and still higher than the earlier RBNZ fix which was up +9 bps at 4.73%. The UST 10 year yield is up +13 bps at 3.99% today.

EQUITIES MOSTLY LOWER
The NZX50 is down -0.3% late in its Friday session. The ASX200 is down -0.8% in afternoon trade. Tokyo is down -1.3% in morning trade. Hong Kong is down -0.3% today in early trade. Shanghai is up +0.1%. Wall Street ended its Thursday session down -0.6% on fears of more Fed rate hikes.

GOLD STEPS BACK
In early Asian trade, gold is at US$1950/oz and down -US$30 from yesterday. It closed earlier in New York at US$1947/oz and earlier still at US$1945/oz in London.

NZD LOWER ON RISING USD
The Kiwi dollar is down more than -¾c from this time yesterday, now at just on 61.8 USc. Against the Aussie we are firmish at 92.2 AUc. Against the euro we little-changed at 56.3 euro cents. That means the TWI-5 is down to 69.7.

BITCOIN STILL STUCK
The bitcoin price is little-changed again from this time yesterday at US$29,263 which is down only -0.3%. Volatility has been low at just over +/- 0.8%.

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

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