VIEW: Westpac Flag Risk Of August Hike

"The tone of today's statement was more hawkish than we expected from the RBNZ at this point. The surprise for us was that the RBNZ explicitly drew a close to its bond purchase programme, and described this as a removal of policy stimulus, rather than letting it quietly wind down as they have done over recent weeks. The RBNZ's media release was largely focused on explaining today's move, rather than providing guidance on where it expects to go from here. That suggests the timing of the next move will be data-dependent – in particular, we have major releases on inflation and the labour market over the coming weeks. We're currently expecting the first OCR hike in November, but the odds of a hike at the August Monetary Policy Statement have risen."