Australia: Consumer confidence down a touch - ANZ

Analysts at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) offer their afterthoughts on its Australian Consumer Confidence gauge released earlier this Tuesday.

Key Quotes:

“Confidence fell 0.6% last week, reversing a bit over half the prior week’s increase. This continues the recent sawtooth pattern. Confidence remains well below average.

In a repeat of last week’s pattern, there were largely oversetting moves within the sub-components of financial and economic conditions. ‘Current financial conditions’ dropped 3%, while ‘future financial conditions’ were up 3.8%. In a similar pattern, the 4.1% drop in ‘current economic conditions’ didn’t quite offset the 5.3% lift in ‘future economic conditions’.

‘Time to buy a major household item’ fell 5%, to its lowest level since mid-December. The four-week moving average of ‘inflation expectations’ was unchanged at 4.1%.”