Tonight is the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Official Cash Rate (OCR) decision. It being an OCR Review there will only be a statement issued to explain the rate decision but no update of the forecasts.
Market expectation is for a 50 basis point cut with a dovish statement. Central banks around the world are announcing their predilection towards holding rates lower for longer. Canada, the Riksbank and ECB officials have all made statements to this effect and we will look to see if the RBNZ follow this trend. Announcing a reluctance to raise rates in the future is a verbal [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Australia and New Zealand'
Market Event risk: RBNZ rate decision
April 29th, 2009 · No Comments
Tags: Australia and New Zealand
Reserve Bank of Australia eases monetary policy by 25 basis points
April 7th, 2009 · No Comments
Reserve Bank of Australia surprises with 25bp rate cut to 3.00% – likely to pause for a number of months
The Reserve Bank announced a 25 bp cut following it’s overnight Board meeting. For the last month some market analysts have argued that the Bank was likely to keep rates on hold for a number of months to assess the impact of the recent aggressive rate cuts and substantial fiscal stimulus packages which are being implemented by the Government. The other argument in favour of a pause was to allow the Bank to conserve some flexibility to deal with potential further [...]
Tags: Australia and New Zealand
Reserve Bank of New Zealand Cut interest rate
March 11th, 2009 · No Comments
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand ease monetary policy by 50 basis points this afternoon, and as a result the NZD has rallied about 1%. Some in the market were looking for a 100 basis point cut. The following story covers this announcement well. This should be seen as an opportunity to sell NZD in the medium term.
By Tracy Withers
March 12 (Bloomberg) — New Zealand’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point to a record-low 3 percent to help steer the economy out of it worst recession in more than 30 years. “The combined effects [...]
Tags: Australia and New Zealand
Reserve Bank of Australia on hold, but not for long
March 3rd, 2009 · No Comments
The Reserve Bank of Australia decided to leave the cash rate unchanged at 3.25% at its March Board meeting.
This brings to an end an extremely aggressive sequence of rate cuts which totalled 375bp over 4 meetings. Analysts assess that this is a tactical move by the Bank to ensure that it has sufficient flexibility to be seen to be continuing to cut rates as the Australian economy contracts through 2009.
Unlike the US Federal Reserve, which has embraced a wide range of alternative policy instruments, given that the Federal Funds rate has fallen to zero, the RBA really only has the cash [...]
