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If you have ever wondered why a forex pair moves sharply on a single Tuesday afternoon, the answer often sits inside one number: the cash rate.

Every time markets get jumpy, a three-letter acronym starts showing up in headlines and trading rooms. The VIX. You will see it called the fear gauge, the fear index, or just "vol." For newer traders, it can feel like an insider's number that everyone seems to track but few stop to explain.

The “resilient consumer” line being recycled across earnings calls is doing a lot of work. Index-level data helps it along. Headline retail sales hold. Spending looks firm. Stop reading there and the story looks simple.

This afternoon, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) did what plenty of forecasters had pencilled in, but few quite believed would actually arrive. It lifted the official cash rate by another 25 basis points (bps) to 4.35 per cent.