1. Bleak interest rate forecast from RBA
Reserve Bank of Australia deputy governor Michele Bullock says the official interest rate is still “probably well below” where it needs to be but is confident that households are in a good position to weather the storm of further increases.

Bullock assured the central bank is focusing heavily on finding the ideal cash rate level where it neither aided nor threatened the economy.

“We’ve got to get it up to some sort of concept of what we call the neutral interest rate,” she said. “We don’t know where that particularly is, but we know it’s a fair bit higher than where we currently are.”

“Big four lender Commonwealth Bank tipped two further back-to-back 0.5 percentage point increases in August and September, while ANZ updated its outlook to forecast the cash rate to rise to 3 per cent by the end of this year,” the AFR reports.

2. Senegalese minister makes alarming claim about current food security crisis
Senegalese Minister for the Economy Amadou Hott has highlighted the knock-on effect that economic sanctions are having on Russia and Ukraine’s agricultural and food exports in how it is compounding the food crises in developing countries.

“Hott said at the Group of 20 meeting of financial leaders in Bali last week that without immediate resolution, the crisis — which involves both a food shortage and high prices — would kill more people ‘than during Covid times’,” CNBC reports.

“We understand that food and fertilizers are exempt from sanctions. However, the market participants, whether it’s traders, or the banks, or the insurers, are reluctant to participate if the products are coming from certain locations because they’re afraid to be sanctioned in the future,” Hott said. 

“We are not responsible for this crisis but we [Africa] are suffering.”

3. JB Hi-Fi releases stellar report as profits soar
According to the AFR, “Electronics and white goods retailer JB Hi-Fi (JBH) expects to post record sales and earnings for fiscal 2022, boosted by a 50 per cent plus jump in online revenue and by the return of shoppers to stores as COVID-19 restrictions eased”.

“Group revenue rose 3.5 per cent to $9.3 billion from a year ago, supported by strong same-store sales growth of 10.9 per cent in its Australian business in the June quarter, according to preliminary results.”

On Tuesday afternoon, JBH reacted kindly in the market to the news, with the stock climbing 2.15% to $41.76 at 3:55 pm AEST. Yet, as with the rest of the market, this is some way off its 12-month high of $55.85 that it reached on March 30.

4. Random fact of the day
The largest cattle station is found in Australia and it is bigger than Israel!

5. ASX futures were up today!
ASX futures were up 77 points or 1.2% to 6624 near 4.44am AEST, with the  AUD +1.2% to 68.92 US cents.

On Wall St: Dow +2.2% S&P 500 +2.7% Nasdaq +2.9%

In Europe: Stoxx 50 % FTSE % DAX % CAC %

2-year yield: US 3.23% Australia 2.72%. 10-year yield: US 3.02% Australia 3.50%.