If you’re an Aussie bull, Wednesday is a real “bull”shit day for you because as Bloomberg’s Mark Cranfield hilariously put it, inflation just “disappeared into the bush”:
lol. cranfield: "Aussie Inflation Disappears Into the Bush"
— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) October 25, 2017
He was of course referring to an across-the-board CPI miss. Here are the numbers:
- 3Q CPI rose 0.6% Q/Q vs est. 0.8% gain
- 3Q weighted median CPI rose 0.3% Q/Q vs est. 0.5% gain
- Trimmed mean CPI rose 0.4% q/q in 3Q vs est. +0.5%
- 3Q trimmed mean CPI rose 1.8% Y/Y vs est. 2% gain
- 3Q CPI rose 1.8% Y/Y vs est. 2% gain
- 3Q weighted median CPI rose 1.9% Y/Y vs est. 2% gain
Now look, the thing you have to understand here is that this is a vegetables story, ok? Here’s Goldman:
There are a number of reasons that we do not believe today’s update will materially shift the RBA’s assessment that underlying inflation is both close to the (lower bound of the) 2-3% target and slowly building. Firstly, the outcome was broadly in line with the RBA’s published forecasts; secondly, the weakness relative to expectations owed mostly to temporary volatility in vegetable prices; and thirdly, both the Australian labour market and global growth continue to consistently surprise the RBA to the upside.
There you go. But that didn’t stop the Aussie from falling as desks were apparently caught long AUD/USD from stops inherited from their order books:
That’s a three-month low:
“The weaker CPI data is likely to weigh on the Aussie in the near term,” Peter Dragicevich, FX strategist at Nomura said overnight, adding that “the third-quarter data adds to the run of CPI underwhelming the market consensus.”
Throw in the outlook for a stronger greenback on stateside tax reform and a possible hawkish Fed appointment against an RBA that doesn’t seem too keen on rushing things and you’ve got a recipe for further weakness. Or not. I don’t know. Maybe ask a vegetable.
