A review of things you need to know before you go home on Monday; PSI high and stable, retail sales healthy, Japan in trouble, ANZ gives themselves a brickbat, NZD strengthens

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

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
NZ Home Loans reduced some rates today.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
ASB dropped its 9 month term deposit rate by -20 bps today to 4.25%. This follows some competitive reductions on Friday of their home loan rates.

JAPAN'S UGLY NUMBERS
Japan is in trouble. After recording a decline in GDP of -7.1% in the June quarter of 2014 in the shadow of their GST rise, 'everyone' was expecting about a +2% rise in Q3. But the data out today reports a further fall of  -1.6%. Two quarters in a row going backwards means they are in a recession. To make matters even worse, those Q2 numbers were revised down further to -7.3%. This is not a minor deal - japan is the world's third largest economy. In the last year we exported NZ$2.9 bln to Japan.

CONSISTENT SERVICE
The services sector remained at consistent and healthy levels of expansion during October, according to the BNZ - BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index. For October it was 57.8 and although 0.2 points down from September, the index has remained particularly consistent over the last four months, indicating healthy activity in the local services sector.

RETAIL SHINES
Retail sales growth in the September quarter has been quite impressive. It was up +4.1% year-on-year and +4.25% if you exclude the vehicle and fuel sectors (fuel was only up +1.7% pa). Two types of retailing shone: eating out is up +9.5% and recorded a $2 bln quarter for the first time ever. And department store sales are up +6.9% pa. They have been a laggard for quite a while but now is their turn to shine again. Not shining are the online 'daily sales' type retailing. The fad is passing. A year ago this sector was growing at more than +20%; now it is declining at -15% pa.

READY FOR THE PLUCKING
The large, dominant insurers in New Zealand are set to get larger and more dominant. "While exposure to New Zealand's inherent climatic risk means there will never be plain sailing for insurers, New Zealand's large general insurance players remain well placed for profitable growth over the coming years." That is the opinion of Standard &Poor's in a new report, titled Large Players Best Placed To Thrive in New Zealand's General Insurance Industry. Get ready to pay more.

GOING BACKWARDS
New Zealand’s dwindling investment in research and development (R&D) has seen it slip down a world table of 34 countries to sit almost at the bottom, according to the recently released Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR) survey. At this time last year a net 20% of New Zealand businesses expected to increase their expenditure on R&D, compared with only 12% at the end of the third quarter 2014.

ANZ ECONOMISTS ADMIT MISTAKE
Here's some perspective from ANZ about Auckland property valuations. "Last week’s release of property valuations for the Auckland area showed an average 34% gain since the 2011 valuation. It also put the value of the Auckland housing stock at slightly more than twice annual nominal GDP, and all up served as a reminder of why the speed limits were brought in the first place. We happily throw out the brickbats when we disagree with others, so one goes to ourselves over musing last week about the possible pending relaxation of LVRs."

CORPORATE BOND ISSUE
Trustpower is looking to up to $125 mln from a new bond issue. The bonds will have an interest rate of 5.63% pa and will have a maturity date of 15 December 2021.

WHOLESALE RATES
Domestic swap rates were slightly lower across the curve after the moves in New York at the end of last week. They are only down -1 bp however for terms 2 to ten years. The 90 day bank bill rate is unchanged at 3.67%.

OUR CURRENCY HOLDS
Check our real-time charts here. The NZ dollar strengthened this afternoon, building some conviction and continuing the trend from late last week. Against the US dollar it is now at 79.5 USc, at 90.6 AUc, and the TWI is at 78.6.

You can now see an animation of this chart. Click on it, or click here.