The Australian stockmarket ended lower today, despite a positive lead from European markets.

In local news, the RBA decided to hold interest rates steady at 3.5%, as expected by economists.

RBA Governor Glenn Stevens said he did not expect the global economy to grow at more than an average pace for the rest of 2012.

Mr Stevens also made mention that domestic inflation remains low, but did note “the introduction of the carbon price is starting to affect consumer prices in the current quarter, and this will continue over the next couple of quarters.”

The central bank gave little away in terms of direction in its concluding statement, other than noting that it’s quite comfortable with current settings and inflation levels.

Most of the sectors closed sharply in the red, with IT and property the only exceptions.

The big four banks ended in negative territory; Westpac and ANZ were the hardest hit, dropping 2.1% and 2% respectively.

The mining majors advanced after several days of declines, BHP added 0.5%, whilst rival Rio Tinto put on 1%.

Fortescue dropped 2.3% after it lowering its FY13 production guidance to between 82 million tons and 84 million tons, from a previous estimate of 86.5 million tons.

The iron ore giant also cut its capital expenditure for FY13 which saw mining contractors NRW Holdings (-7.9%) and Boart (-10.9%) get smashed.

The ASX 200 shed 26 points (-0.6%) to close at 4304.

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Evening Market Analysis: RBA Holds Steady is a post from: Australian Stock Report Market Pulse Blog