Worth eating my own words from two weeks back. The RBA hiked this month, 25 basis points, taking the cash rate to 3.85%, reversing what had looked like a settled cutting cycle since last December.
I wrote at the end of January that I wasn't worried about a hike nobody was forecasting. Turns out nobody forecasting it wasn't the same as it not happening.
What actually drove it, from what I can tell, is the price growth acceleration through the second half of last year, the median jumping past a million dollars, running hotter than the RBA was comfortable with alongside broader inflation data. Lesson relearned rather than newly learned. Consensus about where rates are heading has been wrong at almost every turn in this entire four year cycle.