Did the RBA just signal the end of rate cuts and no-one noticed?

Well, not exactly no-one. Goldman Sachs chief economist Tim Toohey reckons the speech RBA assistant governor Chris Kent delivered on Tuesday amounts to an explicit shift to a neutral policy stance.

Having so closely linked the RBA's easing cycle to the weakness in the terms of trade (and earlier decline in mining investment), Chris Kent's key remark was to flag "the abatement of those two substantial headwinds" and highlight that this "would be a marked change from recent years". Credit:Brendon Thorne

Dr Kent spoke about how the economy has been doing since the mining boom, and in particular how its performance matched the RBA's expectations.

Reflecting on the RBA's forecasts of recent years, Dr Kent essentially framed the RBA's earlier rate cut logic around an initial larger than expected decline in mining capital expenditure and subsequent larger than expected decline in the terms of trade, Mr Toohey said.