Our September call was a hike. The RBA raised the cash rate to 4.60 per cent.

On 11 September 2026 this framework published a HIKE call for the 29 September 2026 meeting, by a margin of 0.040 on its score, and said in the same breath that readings that close to the line had not predicted what the Board does. The Monetary Policy Board raised the cash rate from 4.35 to 4.60 per cent, effective 30 September 2026, and the RBA’s daily series has shown 4.60 per cent on every day since. The call was right. It was the fourth increase of 2026.

The live record is now two calls, one hit and one miss: the 29 July 2026 edition read HIKE for 11 August 2026 and the Board held; the 11 September 2026 edition read HIKE for 29 September 2026 and the Board raised the cash rate. The pipeline’s ledger, which registers the first call for each meeting, recorded HIKE for September on 11 September 2026 and scored it against a hike; the published call and the ledger agree this time. A record of two is a coin that has come up once each way. It does not establish skill, and it does not rule it out. What it does establish is that the framework’s boundary is not obviously too low: a reading 0.040 above it was followed by a rise, after a reading 0.03 above it in July was followed by a hold.

No market comparison was possible in September. The ASX futures feed this project can redistribute was last refreshed on 28 July 2026, so the September edition published no current pricing, and we are not going to reconstruct it after the fact from other people’s reports.

Two promises from the September edition

That edition said the reading was due to be re-run after the 24 September 2026 Labour Force release, and that if the promise was missed the next edition would say so. It was missed. The data pipeline’s previous generation stamp is 11 September 2026; no model run took place between the September edition and the run behind this page, and the scheduled job that is supposed to refresh the data every few hours has not logged a run since 11 July 2026. The four scored releases listed below were all ingested together for this edition, between 5 and 26 days after they were published. The call below is therefore the first reading on any of them.

The second promise was kept: the ten weights and the ±0.306 hold band were not touched after the September result, as they were not touched after August. A hit is as poor a reason to retune a rule as a miss.

What the September edition got right and wrong

• The inflation case was right in direction. The September call rested on persistent inflation well above target with the monthly pace re-accelerating. The August 2026 indicator, released the day after the meeting, put headline inflation at 4.0 per cent, up from 3.5, with the trimmed mean unchanged at 3.6 per cent; the persistent composite rose to 3.75 per cent from 3.74. None of that argued against the rise.
• The labour reading was too comfortable. The September edition described a labour market “cooling slowly from a tight position” and the labour driver scored close to zero. Two Labour Force releases later, unemployment is 4.72 per cent, above the 4.6 per cent NAIRU reference, employment fell by 39,329 in September, and the driver now scores −0.34 and is tagged cut. The six-month rise in unemployment, 0.43 points, has reached the 0.3 point threshold that in the historical record was followed by a cut within six months in 12 of 19 episodes. That is a descriptive association, not a trigger, but it is the first time this framework has had to report it.
• The margin warning was right, for the wrong meeting. The edition said a margin of a few hundredths was a narrow call that an analyst could reasonably read as a hold. The Board did not read it that way. The lesson we take is narrower than either edition drew: the framework’s boundary cannot be validated or rejected on two meetings, so the margin is reported and the reader is left to weigh it.

The November call, and how much weight it can bear

On data available at 20 October 2026 at 4:05 pm AEDT, the pressure score is +0.244. The rule is HIKE above +0.306, CUT below −0.306, and HOLD in between, so the reading for 3 November 2026 is HOLD: no change from 4.60 per cent.

A HOLD in this framework is not a judgement that the pressure has gone. The score is still positive, which means the drivers pushing toward a further rise outweigh those pushing the other way; it is simply not strong enough to clear a bar that the July and September readings, at about +0.34 and +0.35, did clear. The gap to that bar is 0.062, which is larger than the September margin of 0.040 but inside the range a single CPI release has moved the score before: on 29 July 2026 the June CPI alone carried the reading from HOLD across the boundary.

Inside the model the reading is stable. Moving any single driver weight up or down by 25 per cent, 20 tests in all, leaves 20 of 20 at HOLD, with scores from +0.204 to +0.278. Removing one driver at a time changes the call in 1 of 10 cases: without the labour market driver the score is +0.372 and the reading becomes HIKE. Without the inflation-level driver the score would fall to +0.047, still HOLD. The call remains mostly a statement about one number: the gap between persistent inflation and the 2.5 per cent target midpoint contributes +0.208 of the +0.244 total (85.5 per cent), and what has changed since September is that the labour market now takes −0.062 back.

The score shares, 0.390 hike, 0.590 hold and 0.020 cut, rescale the same score into three numbers. They look like probabilities and are not. They have never been calibrated against Board decisions, and with two completed meetings they cannot be.

What changed since the September edition

Five releases on the November input list have landed since the September edition was published:

1. 24 September 2026
   Labour Force, AustraliaAugust 2026 · labour
2. 29 September 2026
   Monthly Household Spending IndicatorAugust 2026 · listed in the release calendar; not an input to the score
3. 30 September 2026
   Consumer Price Index, AustraliaAugust 2026 · inflation
4. 1 October 2026
   Job Vacancies, AustraliaAugust 2026 · labour
5. 15 October 2026
   Labour Force, AustraliaSeptember 2026 · labour

Inflation: the headline jumped, the underlying measures did not

In the monthly CPI indicator for August 2026, released on 30 September 2026, the day after the rate rise, headline inflation rose to 4.0 per cent from 3.5. The underlying measures did not follow it: the trimmed mean held at 3.6 per cent and the weighted median held at 3.6 per cent. Goods inflation rose to 4.2 per cent from 3.2 and tradables inflation rose to 2.9 per cent from 1.7; automotive fuel was up 13.5 per cent over the year and contributed 0.44 points to the headline rate, electricity was up 13.2 per cent and rents 3.6 per cent. Domestic measures were steadier: services inflation held at 3.7 per cent and non-tradables rose to 4.5 per cent from 4.4, so the framework’s persistent composite rose to 3.75 per cent from 3.74.

The monthly pace is where the inflation case has firmed since September. The trimmed mean rose 0.2 per cent in August after 0.5 per cent in July, and over three months it is running at an annualised 4.07 per cent. On the framework’s persistent composite the last three months annualise to 4.3 per cent, above its annual rate of 3.75, so the momentum driver adds to the level driver rather than offsetting it as it did in the September edition.

Jobs: two releases, and the labour driver changed sides

The August 2026 Labour Force release on 24 September 2026, five days before the September meeting, put unemployment at 4.65 per cent from 4.49 in July, with employment up 29,282. The September 2026 release on 15 October 2026 then put unemployment at 4.72 per cent, 0.43 percentage points higher than six months earlier, with employment down 39,329 in the month, hours worked rose 0.06 per cent, participation fell to 66.8 per cent from 67.0, underemployment rose to 6.33 per cent from 6.22 and underutilisation rose to 11.04 per cent from 10.87. Job vacancies for the September quarter 2026, released on 1 October 2026, were 325.0 thousand, down 0.9 per cent on the quarter.

Read together, that is no longer a labour market cooling slowly from a tight position. Unemployment is above the 4.6 per cent NAIRU reference, three-month annualised employment growth is −0.73 per cent, and six of the seven labour components score below zero. The labour driver, weighted at 0.18, contributes −0.062 to the composite, the largest offset to the inflation case this framework has recorded. Since 1990, when unemployment rose by 0.3pp or more over six months, the RBA cut within the following six months in 12 of 19 episodes (63%). Today's six-month change (+0.43pp) has reached that 0.3pp historical threshold; it is a descriptive association, not a mechanical trigger.

Wages and activity: nothing new until after the meeting

No wage or National Accounts release has landed since the September edition, so the wage and domestic-activity drivers carry the same inputs: WPI growth of 3.2 per cent over the year to the June quarter 2026 (private 3.1, public 3.4), nominal unit labour costs up 3.58 per cent with productivity down 0.2 per cent, and June quarter 2026 GDP growth of 0.4 per cent in the quarter and 2.14 per cent over the year, with domestic final demand up 0.3 per cent and business investment −0.5 per cent. The September-quarter Wage Price Index is released on 18 November 2026, after the decision, and the September-quarter National Accounts in early December. The Board will see neither before it meets.

Markets: the 2-year yield has eased since the rise

The 2-year Australian government bond yield was 4.984 per cent on 29 September 2026, the day of the September decision, and 4.919 per cent on 14 October 2026, a fall of 0.07 percentage points. The 10-year yield was 5.314 per cent. The 2-year yield now sits above the 4.60 per cent cash rate by 0.32 points. Consumer inflation expectations, shown for context and excluded from the score, fell to 4.9 per cent from 5.5 in the latest quarterly reading.

Driver by driver: where the pressure comes from

The ten drivers sit in four official-data blocks. Inflation pressure scores +0.544 (hike pressure); Labour market and wages scores −0.159 (cut pressure); Domestic activity, credit and financial conditions scores +0.228 (hike pressure); External and risk conditions scores +0.250 (hike pressure). Each contribution below is the driver’s score multiplied by its fixed weight; together they sum to the composite of +0.244.

Pushing toward a rise (+0.327 in total)

• Inflation level (+0.208). The persistent-inflation composite is 3.75 per cent for August 2026, 1.25 percentage points above the 2.5 per cent target midpoint. It weights the trimmed mean at 50 per cent, the weighted median at 20 and services and non-tradables at 15 each, which is why it sits above the 3.6 per cent trimmed mean.
• Inflation momentum (+0.046). The last three monthly composite readings annualise to 4.3 per cent, above the composite's annual rate of 3.75. On the trimmed mean alone, which is seasonally adjusted and free of this framework's weighting, the three-month pace is 4.07 per cent after a 0.2 per cent rise in August.
• Credit growth (+0.035). Housing credit grew 6.76 per cent and business credit 10.62 per cent over the year to August 2026. These are transmission indicators: credit is still expanding at those rates after four rate rises this year.
• 2-year bond proxy (+0.022). After a stated 0.05 point term adjustment the proxy is 4.869 per cent against a 4.60 per cent cash rate. It is a direction, not an extracted path.
• Wages and labour costs (+0.009). WPI growth is 3.2 per cent (June quarter 2026), private 3.1, below the 3.5 per cent benchmark; nominal unit labour costs are up 3.58 per cent with productivity down 0.2 per cent. No wage release has landed since the September edition.
• Australian dollar (+0.006). The trade-weighted index is down 2.3 per cent over six months. Depreciation adds imported-price pressure; appreciation removes it.
• Commodity prices (+0.001). The RBA commodity price index is up 2.2 per cent over six months. The driver carries 1 per cent of the weight by design.
• Taylor-rule benchmark (outside the score). An adapted Taylor rule with a 1.0 per cent neutral real rate puts a benchmark cash rate at 5.26 per cent, 0.66 percentage points above the actual rate. It is reported as a cross-check and carries no weight.

Pulling the other way (−0.084 in total)

• Labour market (−0.062). Unemployment is 4.72 per cent in September 2026, above the 4.6 per cent NAIRU reference and 0.43 percentage points higher than six months earlier. Employment fell by 39,329 in the month. The block averages seven components and six of them now score below zero.
• Domestic activity (−0.013). Real GDP grew 2.14 per cent over the year to the June quarter 2026, domestic final demand 0.3 per cent in the quarter, household consumption 0.4 per cent and business investment −0.5 per cent. No National Accounts have landed since the September edition.
• Inflation expectations (−0.009). Market economists expect 2.5 per cent inflation in two years, the 10-year break-even rate is 2.40 per cent and business expectations are 2.00 per cent (September quarter 2026). Expectations near the midpoint score close to zero.

This is the first edition in which the offset is a set of drivers pointing the other way rather than the absence of a strong one. Three of ten drivers are negative, worth −0.084 between them, and the labour driver alone takes back 19 per cent of what the inflation and transmission drivers add. That is also where the honest uncertainty sits: a Board that weighs four increases still working through the economy and a rising unemployment rate more heavily than this framework does would be reading the same data reasonably, and so would one that weighs a 3.75 per cent persistent composite more heavily still.

Market pricing and the model

This build has no current futures pricing for the November meeting. ASX and FENICS-derived market series are excluded from the public build pending redistribution rights. The most recent ASX RBA Rate Tracker settlement in our files is 28 July 2026, which priced the August meeting; showing it as November pricing would be wrong. Current market-implied probabilities are published on the ASX RBA Rate Tracker, linked in the sources.

The market data we do hold leans the other way from the model. The bond-market directional proxy leans HIKE on score shares of 0.73 hike and 0.25 hold, because the 2-year yield, at 4.919 per cent, still sits 0.32 points above the cash rate even after a fall of 0.07 points since the September decision. Inside the same pipeline, the simpler rules-based reaction function leans HOLD on shares of 0.651 hold and 0.329 hike, the adapted Taylor benchmark leans HIKE, and the TimesFM pattern experiment, which sees only the shape of past series and is excluded from the score, leans HOLD on shares of 0.51 hold and 0.47 cut.

Market pricing source: ASX RBA Rate Tracker. Benchmark leans are computed by the same pipeline and carry the statuses shown in the data file.

Sixteen scenarios test both sides of the decision

The same weights and thresholds are applied to every stress test: 6 HIKE, 7 HOLD and 3 CUT. The defined state today’s data sits closest to is Inflation sticky, activity weakening, a HOLD state, with a similarity index of 85.6 (against: Unemployment has not reached this scenario's 4.8% state). The nearest hike state, Oil shock, round two, ranks 7th; the nearest cut state, Household balance-sheet squeeze, ranks 9th. The similarity index is 55 per cent distance from current levels and 45 per cent agreement with the direction of travel. It measures resemblance, not likelihood, and the framework marks the closest state’s evidence as active.

What could flip the call before 3 November 2026

The reading is conditional on data available at 20 October 2026 at 4:05 pm AEDT. ABS release dates were re-verified against the ABS product pages on 20 October 2026 and remain subject to change. One scheduled ABS release falls between now and the decision:

1. 28 October 2026
   Consumer Price Index, AustraliaSeptember 2026 · feeds the inflation drivers; the full September-quarter CPI is published the same day

The arithmetic is set out now so it cannot be revised later. The composite sits 0.062 below the hike boundary and 0.550 above the cut boundary. No single driver can take the reading to CUT at any value, so the live question before the meeting is whether it returns to HIKE. On paper five drivers could do that alone: labour market would need to reach +0.00 from −0.34; inflation momentum would need to reach +0.90 from +0.38; domestic activity would need to reach +0.50 from −0.13; wages and labour costs would need to reach +0.48 from +0.06; inflation expectations would need to reach +0.67 from −0.11. The inflation-level driver cannot: even at its maximum score of +1.00 the composite would reach only +0.285.

The only scheduled release that can move a scored driver before the meeting is the Consumer Price Index on 28 October 2026, which brings the full September-quarter CPI and the September monthly indicator together. It feeds the inflation-level and momentum drivers at once, with a combined weight of 0.37, so a rise of 0.169 in their average score would return the reading to HIKE. A labour-driver change cannot happen before the meeting. The two daily market inputs update on every data run; neither can flip the call alone at any value.

Preregistered readings of the September-quarter CPI

The September 2026 quarter is the next quarter-end CPI reading the model has not yet seen. It is the highest-impact scheduled release for the model, not a mechanical decider. The table applies the formula the framework publishes, annual inflation = (June-quarter index × (1 + September-quarter change)) ÷ September-quarter index a year earlier − 1, with a base index of 102.31 (June quarter 2026) and a year-earlier index of 99.73. The readings in the right-hand column are fixed before the release.

The Board also works from material this score does not contain, including staff forecasts and business liaison. This meeting comes with the quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy (new forecasts), so the Board will have a fresh forecast set that this framework will not see until it is published. If the Board raises rates again on 3 November 2026, the most likely data-based reasons are the ones set out above: a persistent composite 1.25 points above the midpoint, monthly momentum running above the annual rate, and a September-quarter CPI that has not yet been published. If it holds, the labour market is the reason this framework would point to.

Does the RBA really look at these ten inputs?

Broadly, yes. Mechanically, no. The RBA has no published rule saying these ten variables are required or that they receive fixed weights. Its mandate is price stability and full employment, and staff brief the Board on Australian and global conditions, financial markets, forecasts and risks. The score compresses part of that information set into a single number. The August hold and the September rise, at readings 0.03 and 0.040 above the same boundary, are a reminder that the compression loses information the Board uses.

Method, reproducibility and limits

The reproduction panel beneath the scenario library is the audit trail: every scenario score recomputes from the published weights, and every input traces to a hash-verified official file. 31 of 31 integrity checks pass on this run. Those checks establish data lineage and arithmetic consistency. They do not establish forecast accuracy, which only the record of meeting outcomes can.

Formally, each driver i is mapped to a bounded score s_i ∈ [−1, +1] from its official observations, and the composite is the weighted sum S = Σ w_i·s_i with fixed weights that sum to one (inflation block 45%, labour and wages 33%, activity 10%, financial and external conditions 12%). The decision rule is: HIKE if S > +0.31, CUT if S < -0.31, otherwise HOLD. Today S = +0.24.

The framework is not a statistically calibrated probability model or a causal estimate of RBA behaviour. Its weights, transformations and ±0.306 hold band are design assumptions, stated in advance and held fixed between meetings, through one miss and one hit. TimesFM is a separate appendix experiment, re-run for this edition, and does not enter this score.

Where this method sits in the literature

Scoring official data into a policy-pressure reading is a monetary-policy reaction function — a well-studied idea, not an invention of this site. Situating the framework honestly: it is a fixed-weight, preregistered variant of that tradition, far simpler than the models central banks actually run.

• Taylor, J.B. (1993), “Discretion versus policy rules in practice”, Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy — the origin of mechanical benchmark rules; our adapted Taylor comparison descends from this.
• de Brouwer, G. and Gilbert, J. (2005), “Monetary Policy Reaction Functions in Australia”, Economic Record — estimated RBA reaction functions; unlike that work, our weights are asserted, not estimated, which is why we label the score uncalibrated.
• Orphanides, A. (2001), “Monetary Policy Rules Based on Real-Time Data”, American Economic Review — why rules evaluated on final-vintage data flatter themselves; the reason our historical checks are labelled final-vintage and our live ledger starts at zero.
• Ballantyne et al. (2019), “MARTIN Has Its Place: A Macroeconometric Model of the Australian Economy”, RBA RDP 2019-07 — the full-system model the RBA actually maintains; a ten-driver score is not a substitute for it and does not try to be.
• CAMA RBA Shadow Board, Australian National University — the established precedent for publishing independent, before-the-meeting RBA calls and living with the outcomes.

Conclusion: a hold reading, with the labour market now in the argument

The September test went the framework’s way. It read HIKE on a margin of 0.040, and the Board raised the cash rate. Set beside the August miss, that is a record of one each, and the only fair summary is that the boundary has now been crossed twice with different outcomes. The data since have moved in two directions at once: headline inflation jumped to 4.0 per cent while the trimmed mean stayed at 3.6 per cent, and unemployment rose to 4.72 per cent with employment falling in September.

On those data the rule reads HOLD for 3 November 2026, 0.062 short of a hike reading. The pressure score is still positive; what has changed is that the labour market now takes −0.062 out of it, and that is enough to keep the reading inside the band. The Consumer Price Index release on 28 October 2026 is the one scheduled input that can change that before the meeting, and the preregistered readings above say what each outcome would mean. We are publishing the call because the rule produces it, and we will re-run it on the day the quarterly CPI lands.

The decision is announced at 2:30pm AEDT on 3 November 2026, with the November Statement on Monetary Policy, and this call will be scored against it in the next edition, whichever way it goes.

Common questions about the November RBA decision

Primary sources

• Reserve Bank of Australia - Cash rate target overview
• Reserve Bank of Australia - Upcoming Monetary Policy Board meetings
• Australian Bureau of Statistics - Consumer Price Index, Australia (August 2026)
• Australian Bureau of Statistics - Labour Force, Australia (September 2026)
• Australian Bureau of Statistics - Wage Price Index, Australia (June quarter 2026)
• Australian Bureau of Statistics - Australian National Accounts (June quarter 2026)
• Australian Bureau of Statistics - Average Weekly Earnings, Australia (May 2026)
• Australian Bureau of Statistics - Job Vacancies, Australia (September quarter 2026)
• Reserve Bank of Australia - Monetary policy objectives and decision process
• Reserve Bank of Australia - Statistical tables (F1 cash rate, F2 bond yields, D2 credit, F11 exchange rates)
• ASX - RBA Rate Tracker (30 Day Interbank Cash Rate Futures)

Previous editions, retained unedited

• RBA September 2026 decision: what the July data say (11 September 2026). The HIKE call for 29 September 2026, scored as a hit above.
• Will the RBA Raise Rates in August 2026? Our Model Just Flipped to Hike (29 July 2026). The HIKE call for 11 August 2026, scored as a miss above.
• Three hikes, then a pause: the public data lean HOLD for the RBA’s August decision (11 July 2026). The original HOLD reading for August.

Publication and correction policy

Status: independent personal research; not commissioned, sponsored or externally peer reviewed. A practising economist has not yet reviewed the framework or this article, and this disclosure stays until one does. No employer, RBA, ABS or Australian Government affiliation or endorsement is claimed.

Author and contact: written by Marcello Babbili and published by Not A Tech Guy. Questions, corrections and methodological challenges are welcome: notatechguy@agentmail.to. Substantive challenges that change a published number will be credited in the correction note.

Versioning: this page identifies the observation dates, generation time and model version. Material corrections are made in place with the modified timestamp updated. Earlier meeting calls are kept rather than rewritten after the outcome: the July, August and September editions remain online unchanged apart from a note at the top linking here.

Scheduled review: this reading incorporates the September 2026 Labour Force, August 2026 CPI indicator, September quarter 2026 Job Vacancies, June quarter 2026 Wage Price Index and June quarter 2026 National Accounts. It is due to be re-run after the 28 October 2026 Consumer Price Index release and scored against the outcome after 3 November 2026. The September edition carried the same promise and it was not kept; that is recorded above, and if this one is missed the next edition will say so too.