A review of things you need to know before you go home on Monday; many retail rate changes, booming car sales, 'more sick days', hard bump in Aussie, equities up, swap rates slip, NZD rises

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

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
NZ Home Loans raised its 2yr fixed rate +10 bps to 4.29%, cut its 3yr rate by -15 bps to 4.34%. These changes mirrored ASB's Friday announcement.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
There have been many today, both up and down. NZCU Auckland's Success Saver has been cut by -25 bps to 2.25% for all balances over $1 and to 3.25% for balances over $5K. UDC and ANZ raised their 9 mth TD by +35 bps to 3.50%. Heartland has raised its 9 mth TD by +45 bps to 3.75% and introduced a 3.85% 15 month offer. BNZ cut its 9 mth offer by -20 bps to 3.25%. Kiwibank cut its 6 mth TD by -40 bps to 3.10%.

HOT, HOT, HOT
Vehicle sales are booming. There were 9,186 new cars sold in June, the highest June level in over 20 years. There were 4,513 new commercial vehicles sales, an all-time record for any month. We will get data for used imports in a few days, but that is likely to be strong as well.

HOW TREASURY SAW JUNE
Treasury today released its June commentary. Their main points: March quarter real GDP growth was stronger than expected, driven by construction, tourism and services and underpinned by population growth: The current account deficit narrowed, partly owing to an increase in the terms of trade that also supported nominal GDP growth: Global market volatility escalated in early June with uncertainty around the speed of US monetary policy normalisation and at the end of the month with the ‘Brexit’ referendum

'MORE SICK DAYS, MORE TIME OFF'
An Auckland survey out today done for a recruitment agency claimed to find "that the difficulty in housing affordability meant there was a growing number of the workforce renting homes. Employers cited decreased productivity due to staff moving around different rental properties and an increase in sickness for those employees who can’t afford to move into better living conditions."

HITTING A HARD BUMP
Building consents for houses in Australia were up +4.4% in May year-on-year, but fell away very sharply for townhouses and apartments (down -24% in May year-on-year). That mean't that overall, Aussie building consents for all dwellings were down -11%. And that compared to an almost +10% rise in April. By any measure, that's a serious dive.

EQUITIES HIGHER
But it is not all doom & gloom. All equity markets that have opened today are trading higher. That includes the NZX, ASX, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo. This mirrors the optimism that the S&P500 showed when Wall Street closed on Friday.

WEAK SIGNS
There is a dairy auction this week. Hard to know just what to expect here, but some very minor trading on the NZX futures exchange for WMP and SMP suggests things could be soft. Having said that, these signals haven't been very reliable recently.

SWAP RATES DIP LOWER
Swap rates fell today by -2 bps across the board except the 1yr which fell -1 bp. NZ swap rates are here. The 90-day bank bill rate also dipped -1 bp, now at 2.41%. NZGB bond yields fell as well with a whole set of maturities now below 2%.

NZ DOLLAR HIGHER
The NZD resumed it upward bias today. The NZD is at 71.8 USc, at 95.8 AUc, and 64.4 euro cents. The TWI-5 is now just over 75.3. Check our real-time charts here. The NZD is at 54 UK pence, its highest in more than 3 years.

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