Consumer plods on

Tuesday 9 September 2025

The Westpac credit card tracker is better but not much.

During the second part of August, the Tracker Index increased by almost 1 point to close the month at 138.5, which is near the upper end of the range that has been in place since April.

The quarterly increase remains slow. Base effects from weather and holiday interruptions earlier in the year are dampening the latest weekly read’s 0.3% quarterly growth.

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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.