A review of things you need to know before you go home on Friday; BNZ's hot 3yr mortgage rate, wholesale trade soft, dairy prices rising, NZD recovers, bank hybrids popular

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

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
BNZ launched a one-week Classic 'special' of 5.29% fixed for three years. No-one else has responded - yet. With HSBC (who offer this rate to Premier clients), this is the lowest three year rate in the market.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
There were no td changes today.

TOUGHENING UP?
The Commerce Commission has used the new enforcement tools granted as part of the Consumer Law Reform last year to issue infringement notices for the first time to motor vehicle dealers in Auckland and Christchurch. 

TAMER
2014 Q4 wholesale trade data out today showed softening revenues and rising stocks.

SOME BIG MOVERS
The latest IMF commodity prices make interesting reading. Charts are here. In the last month rubber has risen +18%, bananas are up +11%, tea is up +27%, and soft logs are up +15% all in NZ dollar terms. Going the other way olive oil is down -18% and pork is down -22%. Most meats (other than pork and salmon) are up double-digits in the past year.

MORE DAIRY PRICE RISES COMING?
USDA dairy price monitoring for 'Oceania' is encouraging, showing better price rises than we saw in the last Fonterra auction. The USDA survey was over a similar period to the Wednesday auction.

MORE 'FLEXIBILITY'
Changes to the Employment Relations Act came into force today. The changes "improve flexibility". A useful summary of them have been published by law firm Bell Gully.

HYBRIDS POPULAR
Australasian banks are busy issuing hydrid capital with the latest issue coming from ANZ NZ. It's all designed to bolster their position in the event of stress. These 'investments' would be the first to fail under OBR. But investors are merrily snapping them up. You have been warned. But are the managers of your KiwiSaver funds listening to the caution?

WORRYING SLIPPAGE
Remember when the roles of Prime Minister, Speaker of the house, Chief Justice, CEO of our biggest listed company, were all held by women? Well, that was some time ago and a new survey by Grant Thornton shows that we have slipped back since then with women in key senior positions. Interestingly, local women in corporate life who were surveyed didn't think there was a 'glass ceiling' for them, only for others. In the global survey New Zealand has dropped to 28th place in a league table of 35 countries surveyed compared with 15th out of 45 countries surveyed in 2014.

WHOLESALE RATES CONSOLIDATES
Local wholesale swap rates consolidated again today, slipping -2 bp in the settling process. The 90 day bank bill rate also fell, by -1 bp to 3.63%.

NZ DOLLAR RISES, THEN STUTTERS
Check our real-time charts here. The kiwi dollar has risen during the day after some sharp falls late yesterday and overnight. It is now at 75 USc, down to 96.2 AUc, and the TWI is at 79.

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