Notes From the Desk – Bank of Canada Decision – Patience Young Grasshopper   As expected, the Bank of Canada (BoC) held rates steady at 4.5%.  They also updated their economic forecasts:   Inflation is expected to fall to 3% this summer and to 2% by the end of 2024. Growth numbers were tweaked to […]

Notes From the Desk – US CPI – Faint Progress US March inflation points to a slight moderation in price pressures.   YoY headline CPI 5% vs 5.1% expected. YoY core CPI 5.6% vs 5.6% expected.   Consumers are getting some relief on food and energy costs, but service prices remain stubbornly high. Today’s data […]

Notes from The Desk – FOMC Meeting – The Dot Plot Thickens The Federal Reserve (Fed) raised the overnight rate by 25bps on Wednesday afternoon, bringing the range to 4.75-5%.  The Fed also softened the language about future rate hikes indicating that they will be fully data-dependent. The dot-plot.   The median projection for the […]

Notes from the Desk – North American Labour Markets Remain Strong. Once again, more people than expected found work on both sides of the border. Canada: • Employment increased by 21.8k vs 10k expected. The mix was strong with 31.1k full-time jobs created and 9.3k part-time jobs eliminated. • YoY wage growth came in at 5.4%, […]

Notes from the Desk: SVB Impact on Rate Markets It’s been a wild Monday morning, with US and CAD 2y rates dropping 0.50%. Since Thursday we have seen the US 2y decline ~1% and the CAD 2y fall ~0.75%. What’s Going On? The fear of the SVB failure is that of contagion and instability in the […]