Laura Bessarati

So we got three rate cuts over the course of 2025 in Feb, May and August.

So we're essentially back to where we started.

Now we did listen to the

press conference by Michelle Bullock an hour after the decision was handed down and also looked at the statement of monetary policy accompanying that decision.

So interestingly, we did see eight of nine board members voting to raise interest rates, only one of them voting to keep rates unchanged.

That's different to the last meeting where it was

split decision.

In terms of the market reaction, we did see the market immediately fall.

So it was already down by half a percent ahead of the decision, but we steepened losses.

And then after a little while, we did see the market creeping back up.

And at the moment,

down by a fifth of 1%, which is roughly around our best levels of the day.

And this really seems to be because we did hear Michelle Bullock say that the board judges the current level of the cash rate to be a bit more restrictive, giving the board space to see how things pan out.

So I think that sort of signals that the RBA could potentially be in wait and see mode for now.

And I think that potentially excited investors.

There was a question as to whether or not interest rates would have been hiked if it wasn't for the oil shock.

And she did say it's quite possible we may not have

had to raise interest rates a third time if it wasn't for that oil shock as it just added to inflation, which was already too high.

So I think that's an important thing to point out as well.

So it's not all just due to the conflict in the Middle East, but here in Australia domestically, we already had an inflation problem.