Monday 22 July 2019

Inflation set to miss again

Landmark speech?

The papers will be excited this week about auction results, and with some reason.


Source: CoreLogic

There's very little stock around and the clearance rate hit 100 per cent on Sydney's lower north shore. 

A lot patchier further from the city, though. 

Otherwise there's little in the way of domestic news this week.

Except there's potentially a very interesting luncheon presentation by the Reserve Bank governor on Thursday, on the subject of inflation targeting.

This may be a somewhat wonkish point, but economists have crunched the numbers for inflation in the June quarter and the calculators are spitting out some very low numbers again.

Here's Bill Evans, Chief Economist of Westpac:


Source: Westpac

Assuming it transpires a trimmed mean inflation result of 0.3 per cent could hold the annual reading down at 1½ per cent. 

In short there's a bit of inflation coming through in auto fuel, but very little inflationary pressure elsewhere.

And there's some deflationary pressure in consumer goods, with fruit & veg prices likely to be down in the June quarter. 

There's been a bit of conjecture about recent meetings between the government and Reserve Bank officials, so this could be an intriguing speech.