One for all you Goldman watchers out there. And general info for others

MNI reporting on a client note out from GS economists

  • revising view on RBA monetary policy
  • change in view prompted by Westpac's surprise announcement to raise variable mortgage rate and sharp rise in risk of severe drought in Australia and New Zealand

GS economist Tim Toohey says:

"With the recent drought stripping between 50-100 bps from economic growth, the risks to our bottom of consensus forecast of 2.0% GDP growth in 2016 remain to the downside.

"As such, we retain our forecast for a 25bp cut in November and although a December interest rate cut cannot be ruled out,we believe it is more likely that the RBA will wait until Q1 2016 before easing again, most likely in March after the release of 4Q15 CPI. As such, we now see the RBA cash rate moving to a low of 1.5% in 1Q16 and expect the cash rate to remain unchanged until 2018"

AUDUSD currently 0.7227 after holding 0.7200 so far