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
Heartland Bank raised its reverse mortgage rate by +24 bps today to 7.99% and its standard floating rate by +30 bps to 6.10%. All current mortgage rates are here. And note, you can compare mortgage offers with our unique calculator that takes into account other costs and cashback incentives, here.

TERM DEPOSIT/SAVINGS RATE CHANGES
Heartland tweaked two short-term TD rates, both marginally lower. All updated term deposit rates less than 1 year are here, for 1-5 years, they are here.

INFLATION RISING COMPREHENSIVELY
Annual inflation hit 4.1% in the June quarter, reaching a two-year high. Fuel costs led the way (up +19.1% from a year ago), but there were also chunky increases for ‘meat, poultry, fish (+6.9%), property rates (+8.3%*), communications equipment (+13.1%), footwear (+4.6%), household energy (+11.6%*), hospital services (+4.5%*,), primary education (+5.1%*) and telecom services (+5.5%). Those marked * are in industries and sectors dominated by state-owned companies. Overall, tradeable inflation was up +4.8%, non-tradeables by +3.8%.

STILL LUCRATIVE IF YOU CAN MAKE THE TRANSACTION HAPPEN
Interest.co.nz estimates the industry earned gross residential sales commissions totaling $484 million in the second quarter (Q2) of this year. That’s down -3.3% compared to Q2 last year. However, it’s up +15% compared to Q2 2024. Houses may be selling for less, but agents earn their fee on a sale and the volume of sales was 19,200 in the quarter according to REINZ data.

OWN GOAL
Check out our new podcast series, Hamilton Confidential. It follows a leak that shows Hamilton company Worldclear processing money transfers, which they claim reached $500 mln a year, for a colorful global clientele over a five year period. Worldclear was found by the Department of Internal Affairs to have failed to comply with several anti-money laundering requirements. It took advantage of some weak regulation designed to make us the “Switzerland of the South Pacific” which has backfired badly, contributing to tarnishing our reputation. This investigation is the result of a years-long effort initiated by interest.co.nz and then bolstered by the OCCRP (Organised Crime & Reporting Project). Our PressPatron Supporters enabled us to complete this work.

NZX50 DIPS
As at 3pm, the overall NZX50 index is down -0.3% so far today, now unchanged for the past 5 trading sessions. It is up +1.8% from six months ago. From a year ago it is now up +5.3%. Market heavyweight F&P Healthcare is down -0.5% so far today. There are only 25 gainers today, led by Oceania, Vulcan Steel, Argosy, Investore and Briscoes. There are 43 decliners let by Synlait, Chorus, PFI, EBOS and a2 Milk.

UPSIDE GONE
There is another dairy auction tomorrow and Fonterra will be bracing for a weaker one again. The derivatives market is pointing to a -1% fall for WMP, stability for SMP, but chunky falls again for milk fats, especially butter which could fall more than -6%.

FINTECH UPGRADE
In Australia, we should note that Revolut has been granted an ADI license as a “Foreign subsidiary bank“.

SWAP RATES HOLD HIGHER
Wholesale swap rates will likely be little-changed today. Keep an eye on our chart below which will record the final positions closer to 5pm. The 90 day bank bill rate was unchanged at 2.88% on Monday. Today, the Australian 10 year bond yield is little-changed from yesterday at 4.96%. The China 10 year bond rate has dipped -1 bp to 1.73%. The Japanese 10 year bond is up +3 bps at 2.74% today. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is now at 4.73%, unchanged from yesterday. (The RBNZ data is now ‘prior day’ with the Monday rate up +6 bps at 4.71%.) The UST 10yr yield is up +2 bps at 4.59%.

EQUITIES MIXED
The local equity market has dipped again today, now down -0.3% so far. The ASX200 is down -0.1%. Tokyo has opened up +1.7% in a partial recovery. Hong Kong is down -0.5% and Shanghai is up +0.2% at its open today, again with ‘home team’ buying. Singapore is up +0.6% at its open. Wall Street ended its Monday session with the S&P500 down -0.2%. The Nasdaq was essentially unchanged.

OIL PRICES DIP
American oil prices are down -US$2 from this morning with the WTI benchmark now just over US$82/bbl, while the international Brent price is just under US$88.50/bbl..

CARBON PRICE FIRMS
There have been many trades so far today and the price has moved up +$1 to $55/NZU. See our daily chart tracker of the NZU price for carbon, courtesy of emsTradepoint.

GOLD FIRMISH
In early Asian trade, gold is up +US$15/oz from this morning, now at US$4036/oz. Silver is up +50 USc at just over US$57.50/oz.

NZD FIRMER
The Kiwi dollar is up +10 bps against the USD from yesterday, now just under 58.7 USc. Against the Aussie we are unchanged at 83.7 AUc. Against the euro we are up +20 bps at 51.4 euro cents. This all means the TWI-5 is now just over 62.5 and up +10 bps from this time yesterday.

BITCOIN FIRMS AGAIN
The bitcoin price is now at US$65,368 and up +0.9% from this time yesterday. Volatility has been modest at just on +/- 1.5%.

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This soil moisture chart is animated here.

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