More on the Reserve Bank of Australia referring the potential leak of Tuesday's decision for an inquiry
About 40 seconds before the decision became public, the dollar moved up by about a half a percentage point. Three-year Commonwealth bond prices also fell.
The story so far ...
- Dear oh dear ... did y'all see the AUD moving higher before the announcement ... looks like an early leak to me
- Here are two charts of the AUD price action BEFORE the official announcement - note how the AUD surged
- An investigation is underway
More now in the local press, also discussing the price action ahead of the February decision:
There is a computerised record of when it is placed on the Reserve's website and released to news agencies, and it confirms that the news did not get out prematurely.
A leak is another possibility, and it cannot yet be discounted. As one market player put it to me on Wednesday, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, maybe it is a duck.
Rate decisions are only known by a small group of Reserve insiders ahead of their release, and a leak if it did occur is highly likely to have been inadvertent.
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Meanwhile, back in the market ... AUD overnight ...
Sellers sitting above 0.7860 while buyers are in again ahead of 0.7800, keeping it tightly-rangebound at present.
