A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; commodity prices rise modestly, RBNZ signals key speech, house prices jump, business sentiment improves, core funding ratio drops, NZD up again

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

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes so far today.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
Heartland increased their business call savings account by +15 bps to 3%.

'GLOBAL WARMING'
June was a warm month weather-wise and the same applied for the ANZ Commodity Price Index, which increased +3.7% month-on-month. There was broad-based strength across all the major categories. However, producers won’t be celebrating too loudly. In many cases world prices are still below the same time last year and the NZD rose over the month too. Farm-gate prices increased just +0.3% m/m in June and that was down -5.9% year-on-year.

RBNZ WATCH
The RBNZ has announced that Deputy Governor Grant Spencer will speak about macro-prudential policy and housing market risk on Thursday evening. They say Spencer is "speaking at a private event" but the text of the speech will be published on the Reserve Bank website at 5:30pm. The RBNZ has form for this type of release; the last time he 'spoke' at a mysterious 'private event' the speech signaled some important policy developments.

WHY SPENCER MIGHT BE WORRIED
And Auckland house prices will on Spencer's mind. Today Barfoot & Thompson's prices set new records in June with their average transaction price now above $900,000 for the first time, and less than 6% of sales were for less than $500,000. And QV also released house price data today, saying the average value of Auckland homes is now more than $975,000. The QV data is a weighted average for the whole Auckland Council area.

GETTING ON WITH THE JOB
Improved business sentiment in the latest QSBO survey by the NZIER sees inflation outlook rise but it is no threat and the rise is not enough to halt looming OCR cuts, it says.

EVOLVING POLICY VIEWS
But Finance Minister Bill English may not agree with the NZIER. He said today that traditional links between NZ$ and interest rates are not holding and says previous OCR cuts didn't affect currency. He pointed out that the TWI-OCR linkage should "not be mechanical:.

DELIVERING THE PROMISED SMALL SURPLUS
Through the eleven months to May, the Crown Accounts are on track to record a small surplus. They show an OBEGAL surplus of $2.304 bln for those 11 months. Treasury says the Government is on track for the Budget forecast of $668 mln surplus for full 2015/16 year.

LEAPING LOANS PRESSURE FUNDING COVER
The May core funding ratio level across all banks fell to 85.5% from 86.6% in April. That is the lowest level since September 2014. The reason is that Loans & Advances rose +1.9% from April to May, but Core Funding only rose a third of that, +0.6% over the same period.

WE ARE A BRIGHT SPOT
New Zealand equities are higher today, and Shanghai is following our lead. But no other stock exchange index is. The ASX is down -1% and there are falls developing in Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

A $1 BLN INDUSTRY
New Zealand’s international education industry grew +13% to 125,011 international student enrolments in 2015. Tuition fee income received from international education topped $1 billion for the first time in 2015. Fee income reached $1.029 billion, a +17% increase ($146 million) on 2014.  Statistics New Zealand recorded the value of education exports as $3.1 billion for the year to March 2016.

SWAP RATES LOWER AGAIN
Swap rates fell today by a further -1 bp across the board from this time yesterday, but most of that small fall happened before markets opened here this morning. NZ swap rates are here. The 90-day bank bill rate is up +2 bps today, now at 2.43%. And Treasury announced today that the Government will buy back and cancel $500 mln of their 2017 bond tomorrow, by tender.

NZ DOLLAR HIGHER AGAIN
The NZD continued its upward bias today. The NZD is at 72.1 USc, at 95.9 AUc, and 64.7 euro cents. The TWI-5 is now just over 75.5. Check our real-time charts here. The NZD is at 54.4 UK pence, its highest in more than 3 years.

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