RBA shocks consumer

So much for the consumer recovery.

Last week’s Roy Morgan consumer confidence number lifted slightly, but since the RBA held, it has wiped out over a year of gains.

The Westpac alternative consumer sentiment measure mysteriously jumped hugely last month.

But get ready for the great retracement as its credit card tracker pulls the handbrake.

The Westpac-DataX Card Tracker Index softened in the two weeks to 1 November. The Index fell 2.0pts to 153.7 and is around 5.1pts below its mid-October peak of 158.8. Despite this recent pull-back the Index is sitting above its 2025 average read of 152.9.

The RBA just gut-punched the consumer.

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.