A review of things you need to know before you go home on Wednesday; no retail rate changes, dairy dip, Fonterra writedown, Spierings out, payout raised, migration down, vacancies up, yields in transition, NZD lower

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
No changes to report today.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
None here either.

DAIRY AUCTION
Today's dairy auction brought the third dip in a row - in USD, down -1.2%. But in NZD there was a gain of +0.3%. The big-volume WMP prices were actually higher, up +1.2$% in NZD.

FONTERRA LOSES, SPIERINGS OUT
Fonterra has booked a $405 mln writedown of its Beingmate investment and signaled that its dividend will be cut this year. That has resulted in CEO Theo Spierings resignation. Over his seven year tenure, he only managed to increase Fonterra's Net Worth from $6.541 bln to $6.688 bln after that writedown, a miserable +0.32% per year and well below inflation over that time of +6.1% in the same time. On an inflation-adjusted basis, that is an effective reduction in Net Worth of $0.255 bln. Over his whole seven year tenure, Spierings will have been paid $37.7 mln. That means he got paid more than a quarter of the measily gain in nominal net worth.

FARMERS UNAFFECTED
Other than they could have had more, supplier farmers to Fonterra are in a slightly better position today with the payout up by +15c to $6.55/kgMS while their dividend is down -$0.10/share.

MIGRATION
February's annual migration gain continues its downward path with more non-New Zealand citizens returning home. This is the lowest rate in more than two years, a trend that started in July 2017 based on policy decisions taken in early 2017. Interestingly, the flow in from Australia, while still tiny, actually picked up in February. The cap on how long workers can stay is driving down those arriving on work visas. These are down a surprising -7%, right at the time employers are struggling to find enough workers.

ONLINE JOB VACANCIES HIT NEW RECORD HIGH
Job vacancy data just keeps on growing, hitting new record highs. Vacancies increased in all eight industry groups. The largest contributors were the hospitality and tourism, healthcare and medical, and IT industries (all up +1.4%). Vacancies increased in seven out of eight occupation groups. The largest increases were for labourers (up +1.6%) and sales (up +1.4%). The only fall was for the machinery drivers’ occupation (down -0.6%).

RECORD VISITOR ARRIVALS
Record visitor arrivals from China helped push the monthly data to a new all-time high. But that was jolted by the timing of Chinese New Year in 2018. Looking past this one-off growth stimulus suggests that the trend of cooling growth occurring throughout the past year is still in place, with annual growth for January and February combined at just +5.5%.

THE $101 BLN POWERHOUSE
Auckland region's annual GDP is now larger than Wellington, Canterbury and Waikato combined, according to the latest update, reaching a record 37.5% of national GDP in 2017. Auckland outpaces the national averages in growth and per-capita growth as well.

CREDIT CARD USE UP STRONGLY
Billings on New Zealand credit cards were up +7.0% in February from the same month a year ago. They were up even more for Kiwi cards used overseas. Balances due on these cards were up +5.8% but the data for how much is bearing interest is only available to January and that is the lowest we have ever seen for a January since these records began in 2000. Meanwhile, banks are still pushing higher credit limits; they are now up to $23.1 bln and we are using just on 31% of that. Visa and Mastercard are capturing the growth in card transactions, rather than the low-cost eftpos systems.

BENCHMARK INTEREST RATES PRIMED
Wholesale swap rates are up by +1 bp across the curve today. The UST 10yr yield is up to 2.90% (+4 bps). The Aussie Govt 10 yr is up +2 bps to 2.72%. The China 10 yr is down -3 bps bps at 3.81% and the NZ Govt 10 yr is down another +1 bp to 2.87%. That is the first time in almost 25 years the NZ Govt bond rate is lower than the UST equivalent. The 90 day bank bill rate however is up another +1 bp and now at 1.96% a 6 month high and ahead of tomorrow's OCR review (which will almost certainly be a no-change) and the US Fed's review (which will almost certainly be another +25 bps rise). On that basis, the US Fed and the RBNZ will have the same OCR at 1.75%.

BITCOIN UP AGAIN
The bitcoin price up to US$8,969, another +5.5% rise today.

NZ DOLLAR LOWER
The NZD has traded in a tight range today after its overnight fall and is still at 71.8 USc, basically where it was first thing this morning. On the cross rates we are down at 93.2 AUc (a six week high) and at 58.6 euro cents. That puts the TWI-5 at 73.1, a fall of more than 50 bps since this time yesterday.

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