A review of the things you need to know before you go home on Friday; positive trade balance, lending growth modest, strong household deposit growth, Wheeler speaks

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today following yesterday's OCR review.

Firstly, trade balance data was out today for December and it was a major positive result with a $500 million surplus. December is often good and this year was no exception. Trade progress suggests we are getting toward a year where we post an overall surplus.

The December credit data was out today as well. Housing credit was up 5.9% year-on-year, rural and business credit were each up about 3.5%, and consumer credit 3.0%. There were no surprises in these numbers. 

Our money supply (M3) grew 5.8%, matching the housing credit growth, which of course makes sense.

Swap rates have jumped back up today, from 2 to 5 years they are up 8 bps.

The New Zealand dollar has flat-lined during the day after the big fall last night.

There were rate rises today on term deposit offers, albeit small ones. Both the Co-operative Bank and ASB tweaked a handful of rates higher, which is interesting because there is no shortage of household deposits. At $124 billion at December, there have grown 10% in a year, far faster than lending growth.

There were also mortgage rate rises, this time from TSB Bank.

Finally, RBNZ Governor Wheeler explained himself more fully today in a Christchurch speech. Essentially he confirmed he is worried about our future inflation track given the accelerating construction activity and that the exchange rate needs to fall. Read more here.