Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today (or if you work from home, before you shutdown your laptop).

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
Liberty Financial cut its fixed and floating rates today. All rates are here. And note, you can compare mortgage offers with our new calculator that takes into account other costs and cashback incentives, here.

TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
None here today so far. All updated term deposit rates less than 1 year are here, for 1-5 years, they are here.

THE FLOW IN, IS DRYING UP, FAST
Immigration flows are retreating fast now. Net population gains from migration are down to 13,066 in the 12 months to July this year, from 115,785 in July 2023 year. That’s about half the population of Mt Eden, a suburb of Auckland, about the same as Riccarton in Christchurch

AUSSIE WINTER TOURISTS FLOOD IN
Inbound tourism data for July was released today by StatsNZ. That showed overseas visitor arrivals of 236,600 in July 2025, an increase of +14,700 from July in 2024. The biggest changes were in arrivals from Australia (up 17,700), China (down 3,700) and the United States (down 1,200). The 126,700 overseas visitor arrivals from Australia were a record for a July month. This coincided with the Australian school holiday period.

MIXED SIGNALS
ANZ’s monthly traffic activity monitoring as reported in its Truckometer series shows Light Traffic activity (cars etc) rose +1.0% in August to be +1.5% higher than a year ago. The more volatile Heavy Traffic Index (commercial) fell -1.3% in the month, but is still up 2.6% from a year ago.

SOFTISH
There was a dairy Pulse auction earlier today for both SMP and WMP, and while prices dipped as expected, they didn’t dip as much as the derivatives markets had signaled. WMP was down just -0.2% from the full auction the prior week, SMP was down -0.6%. However the firming NZD resulted in about a -1.5% fall in NZD terms.

LOCAL AI POWERHOUSE
About a year ago we featured the star of Caitlyn, an AI solution for the rural sector, designed to make the deep knowledge bases in our agricultural community much more accessible. It is now used by FAR (Foundation for Arable Research), Forest Growers Research, and now Beef + Lamb New Zealand have embedded Caitlyn into their portals so that farmers and growers can access it quickly and easily. A couple of major Australian groups (Birchip Cropping Group and Cotton Seed Distributors) are also now adopting it.

TAKING RETIREMENT SAVINGS SERIOUSLY
The 2025 KiwiSaver annual report to March from the FMA shows that total funds under management grew 10% to $123 bln, driven by $12.2 bln in contributions, and $6.4 bln in net investment returns. The contributions figure represents an +8.8% increase from the previous year, despite a challenging labour market and ongoing cost-of-living pressures. Almost half these funds are in growth options, making it clear KiwiSavers are mostly taking a long-term focus to what is a key part of their retirement savings.

NZX50 ON HOLD
As at 3pm, the overall NZX50 index was up +0.1% in a lackluster Wednesday session. And it is up +1.1% over the past five working days. It is up +1.5% year-to-date. And it is now up +5.0% from a year ago. Market heavyweight F&P Healthcare is up just +0.1% today so far. There were 29 gainers led by Infratil, Vulcan Steel, T&G Global and Meridian. There were50 decliners, led by Vista, Kiwi Property Group, Mainfreight and Port of Tauranga.

ANOTHER FAILURE
The September 10 NZ ETS carbon auction failed, in the same way the prior one failed. No bids were received because there were no registered participants. The secondary market is trading thinly and at prices far below the Government’s auction trigger price. The 7.1 CCR units available will be rolled over to the December 3, 2025 auction. This has been the eighth consecutive auction failure, so you have to wonder how long they will persist.

DEEP EXPLORATION
The Government is tipping in $60 mln to drill three very deep bores into the Rotokawa Geothermal Reservoir in the Taupō Volcanic Zone for the first supercritical geothermal exploration. The promise from bores that could go to 3km deep is a vastly expanded and more efficient geothermal energy production. Mercury is the key developing partner, with MBIE and the land’s owners, Tauhara North No.2 Trust.

DEFLATION SETTING IN – AGAIN
In China, they reported that consumer prices dropped -0.4% in August from a year ago, after being unchanged in the prior month and missing market expectations of a -0.2% decline. It was the fifth episode of consumer deflation this year and the sharpest drop since February. China has a similar period of deflation in the second half of 2023, but escaped those pressures in 2024. But they are back again. Food prices fell -1.2%, but beef prices were down -4.3% and lamb prices down -3.6% on that annual basis. Milk prices fell -1.4%.

PPI DECLINE EXTENDS
Meanwhile Chinese producer prices dropped -2.9% in the year to August, less than the -3.6% drop in July, which was the steepest decline since July 2023. Producer prices have now deflated for 35 consecutive month although the latest data is the smallest decline since April.

‘REMAINS STRONG’
Despite growing civil unrest and street demonstrations in Jakarta, Indonesian consumer sentiment was little-changed in August, although it is maintaining its recent low that started in May. However in a longer term perspective, it is +20% higher than it was a decade ago. (The last thing Canberra want to see is an unstable Indonesia as a neighbour.)

BANKS SHRINK WORKFORCES IN PRODUCTIVITY DRIVE
In Australia, a day after ANZ announced 3500 job losses (plus another 1000 ‘contractors’), its rival NAB confirmed it will lay off 400 workers.

SWAP RATES STILL ON HOLD
Wholesale swap rates are will probably be little-changed today at the one year term but firmer and steeper for longer durations. Keep an eye on our chart below which will record the final positions closer to 5pm. The 90 day bank bill rate was down -1 bps at 2.99% on Tuesday, its first time below 3% since July 2022. Today, the Australian 10 year bond yield is up +1 bp from yesterday at 4.28%. The China 10 year bond rate is also up +1 bp at 1.79%. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is up +3 bps from yesterday at 4.39%. The RBNZ data is now all delayed by one business day now, and was down -1 bps at 4.31% at the end of Tuesday trade and its lowest since October 2024. The UST 10yr yield is up +3 bps from yesterday, now at 4.08%.

EQUITIES MOSTLY FIRMER
The local equity market is a little bit firmer in Wednesday trade, up +0.2% now. The ASX200 is also up +0.2% in afternoon trade. Tokyo has opened up +0.5%. Hong Kong up +0.8% with Shanghai unchanged. Singapore has opened up a sharp +1.0% for them. Wall Street ended its Tuesday session with the S&P500 up +0.3%.

OIL FIRMISH
The oil price in the US is up +50 USc at just over US$63/bbl with the international Brent price just under US$67/bbl.

CARBON PRICE FIRMISH
There are more trades again today and the price has held at $57.50. The next official carbon auction is on December 3, 2025 and likely heading for another failure. See our daily chart tracker of the NZU price for carbon, courtesy of emsTradepoint.

GOLD JUST OFF ITS HIGH
In early Asian trade, gold is down -US$10 from this time yesterday at US$3637/oz and off its record high.

NZD ON HOLD
The Kiwi dollar is down -10 bps from this time yesterday, now at 59.4 USc. Against the Aussie we are down -20 at 89.9 AUc. Against the euro we are up +20 bps at 50.7 euro cents. This all means the TWI-5 is now at just over 66.5 and down -10 bps from this time yesterday.

BITCOIN STILL ON HOLD
The bitcoin price is now at US$111,388 and again virtually unchanged from this time yesterday. Volatility has been again modest just under +/- 1.1%.

Select chart tabs

US$
AU$
TWI
¥en
¥uan
€uro
GBP
Bitcoin

Select chart tabs

1 year %
2 years %
3 years %
4 years %
5 years %
7 years %
10 years %

This soil moisture chart is animated here.

Keep abreast of upcoming events by following our Economic Calendar here ».