A review of things you need to know before you go home on Thursday; more banks focus on hot 3yr rates, TD rates fall, unsold stock of houses rises, Fitch says big banks resilient, swaps rise, NZD firm, & more

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
ASB made significant cuts to mortgage rates today, and sneaked in a rise as well. More details here. Sovereign followed. BNZ has just followed with a 3.95% three year fixed 'special'.

TERM DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
ASB also trimmed many of its term deposit rate offers. These come on top of a few other moves recently by other banks. We review the changes here.

ANOTHER CREDIT CARD OFFERER
SBS Bank now has a Visa credit card offering. It's interest rates however are close to what most others charge. No doubt it will also be distributed through its FinanceNow network as well.

LOTS OF STOCK
Latest property listings on realestate.co.nz suggest the Auckland housing market could be in for a long cold winter. It's a buyer's market as stock of properties for sale builds up and asking prices ease. The Auckland now has 26 weeks of inventory (6 months) and nationally there are 19 weeks of inventory (4½ months), up from 17 in February.

STABLE & STRONG
Fitch says the big 4 Aussie-owned NZ banks' strong operating profitability relative to international peers is likely to continue, supported by strong franchises and pricing power. They have kept their credit ratings at AA- for all of them.

GOOD, BUT TRENDING LOWER
March sales of used imported cars were at the same level as the same month a year ago, and that is a better result that the sale of new cars which were down almost -7% on the same basis. But the trend since late 2017 is clearly lower.

LINKER YIELDS DOWN AGAIN
$203 mln was bid today for $100 mln of September 2040 Government inflation-linked tender. The weighted average accepted yield was 1.33% plus inflation, which was sharply lower than the last tender of 1.45%. A year ago the yield exceeded +2.1%.

IRON ORE PRICE JUMPS
The price of iron ore, Australia’s biggest export (although coal claimed this title recently), has surged more than +10% in five days, boosting miners and the Aussie tax take.

CAN'T HANDLE BIG CHANGE
And staying in Australia, their energy market operator is being forced to intervene daily in their electricity grid as an influx of renewable energy and ageing coal-fired power stations make their distribution systems unstable.

LOCAL SWAP RATES RISE WITH TIDE
Local swap rates have bounced strongly higher today, with the two year up +5 bps, the five year up +6 bps and the ten year up +8 bps. The UST 10yr rate is also higher at 2.52%, a rise of another +2 bps since this time yesterday. Their 2-10 curve is stable at +18 bps while their negative 1-5 curve is also unchanged at -9 bps. The Aussie Govt 10yr is at 1.91% (up +7 bps today), the China Govt 10yr is at 3.26% and also up +7 bps, while the New Zealand Govt 10yr is at 2.03% and up +9 bps so far today. The 90 day bank bill rate is up +1 bp at 1.82%.

NZ DOLLAR RECOVERS
The NZ dollar has been firmer all day and now back up to 68 USc. Against the Aussie we are unchanged at 95.4 AUc, and at 60.4 euro cents. The TWI-5 is higher at 72.6.

BITCOIN FIRM
Bitcoin has slipped back from the highs we recorded this morning but it is still above the price at this time yesterday by +2.4% at US$5,060. Bitcoin is tracked in the chart below.

This chart is animated here. For previous users, the animation process has been updated and works better now.