The cut today was the path of least regret for the Reserve Bank. With last weeks shocking CPI number they chose to act rather than wait and potentially fall behind the curve and have to cut even further should Q2 CPI be benign. JCB had written about the probability of a May cut for a period time and we fully expect another follow up cut over the next three months. The RBA rarely tweak interest rate policy in isolation. The JCB Active fund has been set up for the cut for some time running exposures to the front part of the interest rate structure, which are most sensitive to a cut.
Prior to the today's rate cute the expectation of forward RBA rates looked like the following:
RBA Run: May 1.87 Jun 1.815 Jul 1.785 Aug 1.71 Sep 1.70 Oct 1.69 Nov 1.66 Dec 1.655, meaning that at spot AUD of 77 cents already expected 1.5 rate cuts by year end.
Comments
James Marlay
You guys held your nerve in Q1 this year, was looking tight for a little while