How the RBA Rate Decision Moves Forex, on Real Days

The RBA rate decision in forex moved AUD/USD between 6 and 22 pips in the 00:30 candle on the four decisions on our calendar from May to September 2026. An ordinary 00:30 candle ranges about 3. The decision comes in the middle of the Asian session, so on 11 August it made the Asian Box itself.

All times here are New York and a candle is named by the time it opens. That is 14:30 in Sydney. The wider subject is in news trading, and the neighbouring decisions are in the Bank of Japan page and what CPI means in forex.

RBA rate decision forex: what is it, and when does it come?

The Reserve Bank of Australia's board sets the cash rate, and the RBA publishes its monetary policy decisions on its own page. On our calendar the decision, the monetary policy statement and a rate statement all sit at 00:30 New York on 5 May, 16 June, 11 August and 29 September 2026. The press conference was at 01:30 on the last two.

The time is the point. It falls in the quiet hours when The Asian Box is being drawn, between the 17:00 session break and the London open at 03:00, so the decision candle often becomes part of the box that London and New York then trade around. The Asian session is usually the calm one. A release at 00:30 is the one thing in it that is not.

RBA rate decision forex: how far did AUD/USD move on four decisions?

The 15-minute candle the decision landed on, 00:30.

The median range is 19.6 pips. The median for the 00:30 candle on every day of our sample is 2.9, so a decision candle ran two to eight times an ordinary one, and on 16 June it was barely more than twice. It held the day's high or low on two of the four. The count is bankDecisions.RBA in scripts/seo-counts.mjs, and it says nothing of what the RBA decided or how it was expected.

Holding the day's end is easier here than at 08:30, because the hours that follow London and New York can leave it alone, and the count does not make it special. A candle can hold the low of a day and have price back above it by breakfast, as the next section shows.

What did one real day look like? AUD/USD, 11 August 2026

On Tuesday 11 August 2026 the night was quiet until the decision. From the session break to 00:15 the pair traded between 0.70507 and 0.70620, an 11-pip range. Nothing else high impact for the Australian or US dollar sat on our calendar that night.

• 00:30, the decision. The candle opened at 0.70603, near the top of the night's range, and fell to 0.70388. It closed at 0.70449, 15 pips under its open. Range 21.5 pips, more than the whole night before it.
• 00:45. A 9-pip candle, 0.70410 to 0.70499, closing at 0.70497.
• 01:30, the press conference. A 9.8-pip candle, 0.70412 to 0.70510.
• 03:00. The London open. The Asian Box, 0.70388 to 0.70620, was 23 pips, twice what the night had been before the decision.
• 06:45. Price at 0.70609, back over the decision candle's open of 0.70603.
• 09:45. The high of the day, 0.70690, 30 pips over the low.

The decision candle drew the box's low and it also drew the day's low, and the day then went on without it. That is a stop hunt in our words only if there were stops under the night's range, and the range was 11 pips: a liquidity sweep of the stops under the night's low, then a close back inside the range at 00:45. A chart cannot say whose stops they were, and a release at that minute would have printed a move even with nobody under that low.

The rebound took six hours to reach the open again, so a trader who read the close back at 00:45 as the end of it would have been right in direction and early by hours. The Close Back says only that the candle closed.

Does the RBA press conference move AUD/USD more than the decision? Two days

The two days we checked disagree. On 11 August the press conference candle at 01:30 ranged 9.8 pips against 21.5 for the decision. On Tuesday 29 September it went the other way. The 00:30 decision candle opened at 0.70077, ran 21 pips up to 0.70287, which was the high of the day, and closed at 0.70157, ranging 22.0 pips. The 01:30 press conference candle then opened at 0.70179 and fell to 0.69894, a range of 31.7 pips, and closed at 0.69911. The 01:45 candle reached 0.69779, and the low of the day, 0.69656, came at 12:45, 63 pips under the high.

So on one night the decision candle was the larger, and on the other the press conference was. The guides say the statement and the tone can matter more than the rate, and two nights cannot confirm or contradict that. They do show that a day's extreme can sit on the decision candle itself, as the high did on 29 September, and be left behind within the hour.

Is the RBA's candle bigger than the Fed's or the jobs report?

It is smaller. A decision candle at two to eight times an ordinary one is far under the jobs report at six to ten times on the dollar pairs. On AUD/USD itself the 08:30 jobs candle ran a median 36.2 pips against 5.2 on ordinary mornings, 7 times, and the RBA's median was 19.6 against 2.9, 7 times too. The ratios are the same and the sizes are not: a jobs candle moves about twice as many pips.

What do the three seats see on an RBA night?

The Three Seats read 11 August three ways.

• Retail sees a rate decision on a quiet night. In an hour when almost nothing else moves, the candle is the whole night.
• The market maker, as we read it, sees a known minute and an 11-pip range with stops past its ends. That is News-Induced Liquidity. Nobody outside can see those orders.
• The observer sees a box that a release drew. The Asian Box is meant to show the calm before London, and on this night half of it was one candle.

What does this not tell you?

It does not tell you what the RBA decided or how it was expected. It is four decisions on one feed. A close back seen afterwards is not a setup, and our own fixed-rule test of fading hunts on a release lost money after costs. These days were picked afterwards for study. The Bank of England page reads a decision that came at 07:00 with the box already formed.

Course 2 of ForexiaPRO, The Chaos Pattern, teaches this read step by step in lesson 2.3.3, NFP, CPI, FOMC: One Read, Three Calendars.