Developed Countries
Despite historically high interest rates and the fact that variable-rate mortgage issuances dominate the mortgage market landscape, Australian home prices continue to climb at a close to double-digit annual rate. The Core Logic House Price index is now…
Investor and business sentiment continues to improve in the Eurozone. The ZEW Expectations series for the Eurozone (+3.1 to 47 in May) and Germany (+4.2 to 47.1, above expectations) strengthened to 27-month highs. Moreover, the spread between the expectations…
Canadian equities have lagged their US counterparts for over a decade. Sector composition largely explains this underperformance. Banks and natural resources stocks are overrepresented in the TSX while the US stock market is replete with technology and…
The Bank of Japan’s Economy Watchers Survey – a gauge of sentiment among business owners – disappointed in April. The Current Conditions and the Outlook indices deteriorated from 49.8 to 47.4 (20-month low) and from 51.2 to 48.5 (16-month low), below…
Emergency pandemic policies elongated the lag between Fed rate hikes and an observable slowdown in the economy. Notably, fiscal transfers and constrained consumption options endowed households with more than $2 trillion of savings they would not otherwise…
The US Citi Economic Surprise Index has recently dipped below zero, indicating that US economic data releases have been disappointing expectations. Most notably, the ISM Services PMI started contracting in April against anticipation of a faster pace of…
We marked the first X on our Equity Downgrade Checklist and the latest JOLTS, Employment Situation and SLOOS releases brought us closer to ticking some others. We remain tactically neutral on equities but expect that we will underweight them as excess savings are further depleted, leading labor market indicators continue to soften and consumer credit performance continues to fray.
German Bunds have cheapened considerably, and the ECB is about to start cutting rates. Does this combination guarantee immediate profits from buying these bonds?
The Canadian economy added 90.4 thousand jobs in April, up from a new loss of 2.2 thousand jobs in March. The April reading beat expectations of a more moderate increase of 20 thousand. The services sector entirely explains April’s employment growth; services…
Preliminary GDP estimates suggest that the UK economy started growing again in Q1, thus exiting a technical recession in the past two quarters. Q1 growth came in at 0.6%, improving from a 0.3% contraction last quarter, surpassing expectations of 0.4%. On a…