Be afraid: NAB swings to four looming rate hikes

From NAB:

Stronger employment, GDP and investment data have seen us revise our forecasts lower for unemployment, and slightly increase our forecasts for GDP growth and inflation. While we remain cautious about aspects of the economic outlook, we now believe the labour market will strengthen enough to allow the RBA to remove some of the emergency stimulus currently in place. We are pencilling in rate rises of 25bps in August and November of 2018 and a further two 25bp hikes in 2019, although the precise path will be data dependent. A cash rate of 2½% by end-19 is still well below the RBA’s estimates of neutral (~3.5% nominal), suggesting monetary policy will remain supportive of the economy.

Here’s the chart that’s got them excited:

The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers

$1 for your first month, then:

$24.99 / month

$249 / year

Cancel at any time through our billing provider, Stripe

Share

About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.