Empower Blog Inflation

RBA Rate Decision – February 2017

At the first board meeting of 2017, the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they've kept interest rates on hold. It's been a while since we last caught up you know. We last met in December so there's been a lot of data that I've wanted to share with you and talk through, and a lot of developments that have been happening in the housing market. ...

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Variables to Consider when Modelling a Property Portfolio

In this advanced "How to..." session, I want to talk to you about all the sophisticated cash flow variables that any good cash flow management and property portfolio planning tool should have. So let's start from the top in terms of cash flow management. Naturally, we need to do our budget, and we need to assume that value of the money will incr...

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RBA Rate Decision – October 2016

Today the new Governor, Dr. Phillip Lowe and the Board met and they've kept interest rates on hold. Now this was widely anticipated by most economists. There were, however, a couple of economists who were looking to see a rate cut. I think that had a lot to do with our stubbornly high Australian Dollar with the Fed Reserve in the US not moving on i...

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RBA Rate Decision – September 2016

The Reserve Board met today, and they've kept interest rates on hold. That's after dropping the cash rate by 25 basis points last month. Now they are looking for a lead in terms of where they go next, and most people are predicting that it is going to go down. In fact, before this announcement, 38 economists were surveyed, and they all anticipated ...

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RBA Rate Decision – August 2016

As I anticipated last month, the Reserve Bank has moved on the cash rate by dropping the cash rate lower. We are now in a stage where we are effectively in an uncharted territory with the cash rate as low as what we've got. It's an interesting time. So on balance, what they've looked at is the inflation data. Now, usually what they like to see is i...

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RBA Rate Decision – July 2016

Wow, to be a fly on the wall at the latest RBA Board Meeting. It would be fascinating as the conversation would have move to the political uncertainty that we currently got in federal politics. Really important to understand that this 'circus' that is happening in Canberra and this new structure of our government, the lower house and the upper hous...

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RBA Rate Decision – June 2016

Today the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they kept interest rates on hold. So the cash rate remained at 1.75% leading into the federal election on July 2. So there’s a couple of things that I want to talk about. Firstly is negative gearing. We know that the Liberal Party is not making any changes to negative gearing but the Labor Party...

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RBA Rate Decision – May 2016

On this budget Tuesday, the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they’ve dropped interest rates. Now this is the first interest rate drop since May of last year. So it’s been 12 months but they've decided to pull the trigger on the cash rate and lower in that cash rate. Now what’s interesting about this is, if we actually go back two wee...

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2016 Global Economy & Equity Outlook (Part 1) | United States Economy

Here are the other parts of the 2016 Global Economy & Equity Outlook: Part 1: United States Economy Part 2: Asian and European Economy Part 3: Commodities Market Part 4: Australian Economy Transcript: Ben Kingsley: So here we are for another year. I’m with my business partner Michael Savy who’s our chief investment officer. He heads ...

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RBA Rate Decision – September 2015

Hello Ben Kingsley here. Thanks for watching this RBA video announcement. As you can obviously pick up, I'm not in the office as I usually am at the moment. I'm currently on a family holiday up in tropical North Queensland. What an interesting time to take a holiday. In fact the last time, as I was saying it to my wife, that I took a holiday lik...

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RBA Rate Decision – August 2015

Today the Governor and the Reserve Board met and kept interest rates on hold for another month. Now, they are continuing to stay at record low levels where the cash rate remains at 2%. Now for a first in this commentary series that you may have seen or may not have seen before, I'm going to actually cut to some audio of Glenn Stevens presenting a...

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RBA Rate Decision – April 2015

Today the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they've kept interest rates on hold for the April 2015 board meeting. That has kept the cash rate at 2.25%. Now, why had they kept the rate on hold? Well the reasons come down to a few things. To begin with, they've probably seen some early signs on the economy starting to pick up. Those early ...

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RBA Rate Decision – February 2015 – Why did they drop 25 basis points?

So why did the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) moved on interest rates this month when most commentators including myself actually thought it would stay at the 2.5% cash rate. The 25 basis points reduction to 2.25%- what's behind that? Well, the story is around our currency and we really need to get our currency lower. I think you'll find the RB...

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