Preview of the Reserve Bank of Australia monetary policy meeting today

  • Statement due at 0330GMT
  • There is no press conference (there never is but ICYMI)

A month ago or so the RBA switched to an easing bias. They had previously held a neutral bias. In the Statement accompanying the February meeting the Bank maintained its neutral bias but the very next day RBA Governor Lowe announced a pivot to dovish. Lowe has prided himself on the RBA being a 'source of stability' but the manner in which he turned the ship around was, at best, destabilising. Indeed, TD went further and called the Bank's Statement misleading, and they had a point.

Anyway, enough with lamenting past mistakes, let's see what the RBA produce today. Previews posted earlier:

Previews via …

Westpac:

  • The Reserve Bank Board meets … on April 2. Unusually, this meeting will be on the same day as the announcement of the Federal Budget at 7:30 pm on that evening. As such, we would expect that the Governor's Statement will be fairly low key with little change from the sentiment we saw in the March meeting.
  • Westpac is anticipating that following the May meeting, the RBA will move to a clear easing bias, which will be justified by downward revisions in the growth forecasts. However, it is unlikely that there will be any hints of this action in the April Governor's Statement.

NAB:

  • RBA should keep the cash rate steady at 1.5% as the Treasurer likely to announce a small surplus in 2018-19.

NAB is referring here to the Australian budget announcement due later on Tuesday, which is expected to contain (pre-election bribery in the form of ) tax cuts.