Australia Westpac consumer sentiment rose 0.1% to 104.4 in December, up from 104.3.
Westpac Chief Economist Bill Evans noted in the release that the disappointment of just 0.3% Q3 GDP growth is “likely to prompt the RBA to lower its growth forecasts for 2018 and 2019.” Also, “the atmospherics of a central bank forecasting strongly above trend growth is likely to change to one talking more about near trend growth.”
And markets pricing have largely moved towards Westpac’s rate forecast. That is RBA will keep OCR unchanged at 1.50% “over the course of both 2019 and 2020”.
