A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; agents see lower house prices, used imports preferred to new cars, swaps unchanged, NZD firmer, & more

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
None to report today, yet.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
None here either.

WHAT LAND AGENTS THINK
A CoreLogic survey has revealed that two-thirds of real estate agents think house prices will fall, and a quarter think they'll fall by more than 10% in 2020.

BACK TO BUYING ALMOST 20,000 NEW CARS A MONTH
In a sign of the times, new car sales were weak in June (down -15%) while used imports sold strongly (up +7%). The net is a year-on-year decline of less than -3%, which is far stronger than many may have expected. "The stark contrast between registrations in the new and used car markets hints there is a shift in preferences towards second-hand vehicles as peoples’ earnings have been reduced," observed Infometrics. One reason used car sales were weak is because rental car demand has evaporated with the tourism market. In the whole month only 45 cars were sold into rental fleets (10 Skoda Scalas and a handful of others). Despite the pullback, the rise and rise of SUV sales is still happening with 72.5% of all new passenger cars being SUVs, the highest proportion ever.

FINANCE DIRECT ANNUAL PROFIT FALLS
Finance Direct has posted March year profit after tax of just $1,000, down from $355,000 last year as operating expenses and staff costs increased $370,000 to $2.69 million. The non-bank deposit taker had total assets of $15.9 million at the end of March, and $12.7 million worth of secured debenture stock.

CHANGES IN BNZ EXECUTIVE TEAM
BNZ says Christine Yates, its chief customer officer for private banking, wealth and insurance, is leaving the bank effective July 22. Her responsibilities are being divvied up with Paul Carter taking on oversight of private banking, alongside his role as chief customer officer and oversight of partnership banking. Daniel Huggins, BNZ's executive general manager for customers, products and services, adds oversight of wealth and insurance.

A MUCH FASTER REBOUND
Chinese service providers signaled the sharpest increase in activity for over a decade in June. Their service sector PMI rose from 55.0 in May to 58.4 in June, to signal a substantial increase in service sector activity. Furthermore, total new orders rose at the quickest pace since August 2010 and new export work expanded for the first time since January. Firms widely reported that overall market conditions had continued to improve following an easing of measures related to the coronavirus pandemic.

REBOUND SALES
Australian retail sales rose +16% in May from April and marginally better than expected. Year-on-year they were up +5.5% after the -9% year-on-year drop in April.

END OF THE BOOM?
The iron ore price seems to be topping out at just under US$100/tonne and market chatter is that it is downhill from here. The top has been called many times recently, so this may be a false one too. But with the world in recession and supply still strong it is hard to why it has stayed so elevated for so long. Excessive Chinese inventories aren't helping either. The same could be said for bulk shipping, but the Baltic Dry Index just keeps on rising, defying expectations. However, a supply of ships (and especially crews willing to risk stranding) is shrinking fast and is keeping this demand elevated.

EQUITY MARKET UPDATES
The S&P500 ended its Wall Street session up another +0.5% with another late dip to end the week. Their week ended early on Thursday ahead of their national holiday and it was a good week for equities which were up +4.0%. That added +US$1 tln in capitalisation, trimming the year to date losses to -US$810 bln. Shanghai has opened strongly, +1.4%. Hong Kong has opened up +0.6%. Tokyo has opened up +0.4% also in very early Friday trade. The ASX200 is also up +0.4% in early afternoon and heading for a weekly gain of +2.5%. The NZX50 Capital Index is up +0.6% and about to book a weekly gain of +4.1% largely on the back of F&P Healthcare which will end above $20 bln in capitalisation, and A2Milk which will close with a capitalisation of $15.6 bln. Meridian Energy at $12.6 bln is the only other NZ company with a capitalisation in the clouds this high..

SWAP RATES UPDATE
Swap rates are probably unchanged today. We don't have final wholesale swap rates movement details yet but we will update this later in the day if they show a significant movement. The 90-day bank bill rate is unchanged at 0.31%. The Aussie Govt 10yr is down -3 bps to 0.91%. The China Govt 10yr is up 3 bps at 2.92%. The NZ Govt 10yr yield is down -4 bps to 0.96% after yesterday's strong rise. The UST 10yr is little-changed at 0.67%.

NZ DOLLAR FIRMER
The Kiwi dollar is still rising, now at 65.2 USc. Against the Aussie we are also firmish at 94.1 AUc. Against the euro we are up at just under 58 euro cents. And that means the TWI-5 is now up over 70.

BITCOIN SOFT
The price of Bitcoin is softer and down to US$9,109 which is a slip of -1.6% since this time yesterday. The bitcoin price is charted in the currency set below.

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».