Australian shares lower despite inflation drop

The Australian sharemarket has fallen despite inflation dropping to its lowest level in more than three-and-a-half years. At midday local time the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was down 30 points, or 0.36%, to 8219.

2, while the broader All Ordinaries had fallen 24.3 points, or 0.29%, to 8481.



6. Investors were unimpressed by the one percentage point drop in the annual consumer price index to 2.8% in the September quarter.

That puts headline inflation back within the Reserve Bank of Australia’s target range of 2% to 3%. But the drop was already widely expected by analysts and the all-important trimmed mean, which the central bank uses to gauge underlying inflation, was still at 3.5%.

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