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Whoppee, the boom is back – oil up, copper up, shares up, iron ore up, interest rates down – and the Aussie dollar is up (oh, no) – it’s boomsville according to any number of market analysts. Oh, and gold’s down.

These are the key changes in the statement yesterday from RBA Governor, compared with the one issued after the December meeting.

The Reserve Bank will cut rates again in coming months, with some economists predicting the cash rate could be under 2% by year’s end – and there’s a very simple reason for this, the economy is slowly, but surely sliding towards a halt.

The auguries for the local market today look good – a solid bounce on Wall Street in the last hour of trading this morning, a solid gain here in futures trading and the dollar back over 78 US cents – and the Reserve Bank board meeting today which (in the market at least) is widely expected to see a cut in the cash rate to 2.25%.

There’s an old American stock market adage which says that the way Wall Street performs in January tells us how the rest of the year will go.

Nominally the very positive end to trading in commodities on Saturday morning, our time, with big rises for oil and gold, should have been good news generally for investors.

So will the Reserve Bank board cut the cash rate tomorrow – while more and more media commentators and others in business are saying ‘yes’, or ‘maybe’ or ’they have to cut’, quite a few business economists are still saying ’no’ this time around, but perhaps March or April.

Amid the flood of earnings results in the US, Asia and Europe and the UK last week, two stood out in the mind of the markets – tech giants Apple and Amazon.

Amid a welter of news, data, company reports and other events this week here and offshore, the Reserve Bank board meeting tomorrow and possible rate cut dominates for local investors and markets.

Some of the world’s major oil groups wielded the axe on spending and investment plans overnight with a vengeance, with more to come tonight and early next week. All up the cuts and losses in written down asset values topped the $25 billion mark, and that figure is open ended as the groups concerned promised more cuts if oil prices remain weak through the year.

No change at the Fed, or RBNZ, but watch Greece, it’s new government and some of its odd ideas are worrying markets.

Predictably, Australian inflation slowed sharply in the three months to December, thanks to falling oil and petrol prices, while underlying cost pressures (which the Reserve Bank looks at) remained solid, but well inside its 2% to 3% target range.