Welcome to the Australian Markets Weekly update.

• We suspect little flow on for Australian rate pricing from the RBNZ and BoC moves – central banks are responding to their domestic circumstances, and the Australian economy, so far, continues to perform better than expected. For that same reason, the Minutes and Q2 CPI are also likely to be less significant than usual, though the Governor’s speech could give some new information on how the Bank is seeing things.
• Our core views remain broadly on track, in spite of all the recent uncertainty about Greece and China: the non-mining economy is currently more than offsetting the drag from the mining economy – especially as far as the labour market is concerned. This will see the RBA on hold at 2% for an extended period. The Fed continues to edge toward tightening in the next few months, which should provide support for the US$ and allow the $A to continue to ease toward year-end targets of US$0.72.
• This week, we also review a few of the more popular questions we received last week while marketing to clients in Melbourne, including: (i) why are consumer and business confidence diverging (and how will this resolve)?; (ii) how is Chinese apartment investment affecting the Australian housing market; and (iii) are we worried about the recent sharp drop in the good time to buy a dwelling question in the WBC consumer confidence survey?

For a full synopsis of the markets this week download:

• Australian Weekly Markets: July 20 2015 (PDF, 452 KB)

For further FX, Interest rate and Commodities information visit nab.com.au/nabfinancialmarkets

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