RBA rate relief & the AUD
Favourable trends in Australian inflation mean interest rate relief for indebted households and businesses is on the horizon. Q4 2024 CPI printed below consensus forecasts (as it has tended to do over the past two years), and importantly it also undershot the RBA’s projections. Headline inflation rose just 0.2% in Q4 with the annual rate running at 2.4%pa. The trimmed mean (i.e. the RBA’s preferred underlying metric that provides a guide to inflation persistence) came in at 0.5%qoq. As a result, core inflation decelerated to 3.2%pa, with 6-month annualised growth, a gauge of the pulse rate trajectory, stepping down to...