UK CPI is now within a hair’s breadth of requiring a letter to the Chancellor. RPI increased to 3.9% from 3.6%, which was also above expectations. The increased fuel prices were expected this month, but August is also a high inflation month given transport price hikes that take place as people head away for their holidays, and as clothing and footwear prices are hiked with the new season’s coll…
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Guest contributor – Jean-Paul Jaegers, CFA, CQF (Senior Investment Strategist, Prudential Portfolio Management Group)
A lot has been written on the recent softness in US inflation data, as headline inflation pulled back, with a similar trend in core inflation. Admittedly, a number of unusual factors have partly been a driver behind this, although more importantly there is quite some persistence…
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On August 4th last year, the Bank of England announced a series of easing measures in response to the Brexit referendum results. They were very concerned regarding a potential slowdown and collapse in both the economy and corporate confidence and so implemented a variety of measures; reducing interest rates, increasing liquidity lines for banks, and reintroducing their gilt and corporate bond p…
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Today marks five years on from Mario Draghi’s now famous ‘whatever it takes’ remarks, widely credited with sparking a reversal in the Eurozone’s fortunes.
Below are five charts offering some insights into the European Central Bank’s successes and failures in the ensuing period, as well as some of the challenges that remain.
Five years ago, funding costs for the …
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Though the recent US Treasury report did not name any country as a currency manipulator (see more details on this in Mario’s blog), the monitoring list centres on larger economies that meet the following criteria:
Yields on Canadian sovereign bonds have been dragged higher in recent months, with the yield on the 10-year bond recently reaching 2 year highs. This sell-off appears to reflect the US reflation narrative, rather than the economic fundamentals of the Canadian economy.
The market currently thinks the Bank of Canada will remain on hold throughout 2017, pricing in only one rate hike – a 20 basis …
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The cost of new mortgage borrowing and payments on outstanding household debt can have a large impact on the rate of growth of an economy. For this reason, central bankers are interested in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. It has been shown that interest rates can have a stronger influence on an economy where there are a high proportion of variable rather than fixed-rate mortgages…
Read the articleThe votes are in and it’s pretty unanimous. Despite Mario Draghi’s best efforts to persuade otherwise, the market is clear that today’s announcements are tantamount to tapering. Frankly anything less than an extension of Euro 80bn per month, irrespective of the duration, was likely to have been taken as such, with scant evidence of the inflation target being achieved during the forecast horizon…
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The bond market was intimidating during the Clinton years, and has started as it means to go on for Trump’s term. As we celebrate this website’s 10th anniversary, it proves fitting that the bond market reminds us why we named the blog as we did.
The result of the US election was a surprise given the polls, but the exceptionally short-lived “risk-off” reaction in bond markets has been just as …
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Last week, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided that despite low unemployment and a sustained increase in breakeven inflation expectations since September, it was appropriate to maintain the Fed Funds rate between 0.25-0.50%. In trying to understand this action, and why the Fed is happy to wait until December to hike rates, a number of theories have been suggested by the financial c…
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