Empower Blog Cash Rate

RBA Cash Rate October 2019: Third Time Lucky?

Today Governor Lowe and the Reserve Board met for the first Tuesday of October and they've cut the cash rate. Now, 75% of economists believed that this was going to be the case.  If you were listening to some of the commentary last week from Governor Phillip Lowe around his concerns in the market, it was pretty clear that he was signalling to the ...

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RBA Cash Rate September 2019

G'day and welcome to September and on the first Tuesday of this month Governor Lowe and the RBA Board met and they kept the cash rate on hold at 1%. Now, some punters might have been thinking, “Well are we going another 25% lower?”, but really most economist believe that's going to be next month. So I suspect the board decided not to spook the...

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RBA Cash Rate August 2019: Is it Time to FIX Your Rate?

Today Governor Lowe and the Reserve Board met and they kept the cash rate on hold at 1%. Now that's obviously on the back off two rate cuts that we sold in June and July, which took the cash rate down to 1%. So the consensus is that we needed to see some time to see what impact those two particular rate cuts have had in terms of confidence, sentime...

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RBA Cash Rate July 2019: Twice in a Row?

Today Governor Lowe and the Reserve Board met and they changed the cash rate for the second consecutive month, dropping the cash rate down by another 25 basis points. This is reasonably well-signaled, even though some economists still thought that the RBA may wait until August. So, what is their agenda? Well, if you look at the minutes — and als...

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RBA Cash Rate June 2019: The Cash Rate Announcement We’ve All Been Waiting For

Today Governor Lowe and the Reserve Board met and, yes, we have a rate movement. That's right — a 25 basis point cut, bringing the cash rate down from 1.5% down to 1.25%. For all you data nuts, I'm going to give you a little bit of a backstory in regards to where the cash rate has been. So it is the first rate move of any rate movement since ...

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RBA Cash Rate Decision – May 2019

At the May board meeting, Governor Lowe and the Reserve Board — well, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall here because I'm sure this would have been a serious consideration—  but they kept the cash rate on hold. That's right. For the 34th consecutive month, the cash rate is going to remain on hold. Now, does that mean that we're...

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RBA Cash Rate Decision – April 2019

Today Governor Lowe and the Reserve Board met for their April board meeting and they kept the cash rate on hold at 1.5%. No surprises there in the lead up to an upcoming election — we’re only a month or so away from the Federal Election. I want to start looking globally first — so let's do around the grounds globally. The US market — so the...

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RBA Cash Rate Decision – March 2019

On the first Tuesday of March the Reserve Governor and the board met, and they kept the cash rate on hold once again. But certainly what a difference a month makes when it comes to what’s likely going to happen in the economy moving forward and what’s going to happen to the cash rate! In a minute, I want to talk more about what Bill Evans said ...

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RBA Cash Rate Decision – February 2019

Today Governor Lowe and the reserve board met for the first time in 2019 for their February cash rate decision. That decision was to keep the cash rate on hold — but for the first time I suspect that that board meeting would have gone on longer than normal. And that’s because there has been some deterioration going on in the economy. I wanted t...

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RBA Cash Rate Decision – December 2018

On this first Tuesday of December the Reserve Governor and the Board met as we enter the festive season, and they kept the cash rate on hold at 1.5%. I will come back to what's happening in the domestic economy, but first of all I want to talk more broadly about what's happening in the global economy. Most namely the biggest story of the last six w...

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RBA Cash Rate Decision – November 2018

On this Melbourne Cup Tuesday, Reserve Governor Lowe and the board met and they've kept the cash rate on hold for another month. Really, what we're seeing here is no new stories — inflation is just non-existent. The September CPI data came in at 0.4% increase, which took the annual rate to 2%. Now, the market was expecting a 0.5% increase so we ...

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RBA Cash Rate Decision – October 2018

On this first Tuesday in October, the RBA Board met and, really, the challenge was, “What could they do?” They did very little — probably sipped a bit of tea because there's nothing more for them to do with the cash rate. And this may be the case for several years to come. Now, why is that? Especially considering that the GDP numbers in June...

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RBA Cash Rate Decision – September 2018

Today, the Reserved Governor and the Board met and they kept the cash rate on hold at 1.5% for the first month of spring. There's obviously been a lot happening over the course of the last month. We now have a new prime minister — ScoMo as we like to refer to him — so, Scott Morrison takes over from Malcolm Turnbull. Now, the economy, like in...

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