Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.
THERE WERE MORE RATE MOVES TODAY
TSB Bank and AMP Home Loans both raised their floating rates mortgage rates and HSBC will do so on Monday. HSBC also raised its e-Saver account rate by 25 bps too. AMP Home Loans also announced a cut to its fixed six month rate of 15 bps - and that may signal that a similar cut will be announced by Kiwibank soon.
DAIRY PRICES FIRMED
The fortnightly Oceania dairy price monitoring that the USDA report on confirmed the GDT auction, picking up a number of small rises in the market pricing of key dairy ingredient prices. Unfortunately in NZ dollar terms that translates into price falls given the high Kiwi dollar.
CONFIDENCE HIGH
The ANZ-Roy Morgan survey of consumer confidence showed that we are holding on to our high confidence levels.
JOB ADS TAKE A [SMALL] KNOCK
Confidence may be high, but the latest job ads survey the number of job ads actually fell. But in context, it follows four months of rises. An upward trend remains in place but it is no longer accelerating. It’s too early to tell if recent interest rate hikes may have put firms in wait-and-see mode.
IAG COMPLETES ITS LUMLEY BUY
After getting all the NZ approvals it needed, IAG today also got the final Aussie approval. It will own all the Wesfarmers insurance business from June 30, 2014.
WEEKLY BANKRUPTCY NOTIFICATIONS
This week we saw a sharp fall in the number of reported bankruptcy notifications. Liquidations on the other hand spiked higher. Overall this year the monthly total bankruptcy notifications figures have been showing an upward trend.
WHOLESALE RATES
Wholesale swap rates gave up another 2 bps across the curve today, except for the one year which was down 1 bps. The 90 day bank bill rate held at 3.58%.
OUR CURRENCY
The NZ dollar marked time all day today at its elevated level. The NZD is now at 87.1 USc, the Aussie is at 92.7 and the TWI is at 81.0.
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