Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.
SBS has raised their term deposit rates for terms 18 months to 3 years. The rises are healthy, up 20 bps for 18 mths to 4.40%, up 25 bps for 2 years to 4.75%, and up 35 bps to 5.10% for three years. The three year rate is the best bank TD rate in the market at the moment.
Our weekly grocery price monitoring confirms prices are stable - in fact in the latest week they are 2.4% lower than at the same time last year. However, the strong NZ$ does mean they should be even lower - our Aussie monitoriung or the same basket gives them a 9.5% advantage whereas it was almost all square a year ago.
Swap rates are down about 4 bps across the board today. 90 day bank bill rates are unchanged today at 2.87%.
Exchange rates have hovered at or below 81 USc for most of the day - ditto the Aussie ahead of the RBA review which is due out in 30 minutes.
Commodity prices rose in January. The ANZ Commodity index rose to a new all-time record in world prices, and the highest it has been since 2011 in NZ$ terms. Both dairy (butter especially) and forestry (logs) kicked it along nicely in January.
The issue of the day has been the fight over Trade Me's property listing fees. Agents and vendors have been weighing in on opinions about the new push by dominant Trade Me to raise its prices. You can follow the debate here. (We tried hard not to run with the headline 'Revolting real estate agents' !)
NZ residential property listings rose 5% in January year-on-year but inventory 10 weeks down on long-term average.
Update: The Reserve Bank of Australia left its cash rate unchanged at 2.5%. It was a bit more upbeat about Austraia's economy although it sees lower growth and higher unemployment before things turn better. It is more worried about inflation.
And finally, in case you missed it earlier, sales of new cars in January were stunningly high, not only for a January, but for any month. It seems that this is what Kiwis did after Christmas - they went out and bought a new car, usually a Toyota, often an SUV. This rises looks positively frothy.
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