The U.S. Federal Reserve said on June 12 that it was holding its key interest rate unchanged at approximately 5.5%, a level it has held since July 2023. The Fed has raised interest rates 11 times since March 2020 to fight inflation. Inflation has fallen from a high of 9% in June 2022 to 3.4% […]
Tag Archives: interest rates
The Bank of Canada cut its key lending rate by 25 basis points to 4.75%, the first rate cut since March 2020. The central bank said that further interest rate cuts were on the table should inflation continue to ease. The Bank of Canada was the first central bank among G7 nations to announce a […]
Persistently high interest rates are taking a big bite out of the Canadian economy. In February, Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew just 0.2% on a month-over-month basis. That’s lower than the 0.3% economists were expecting and well below Statistics Canada’s own advanced estimate of 0.4%. On an annual basis, Canadian GDP grew 0.8%, well […]
Over the last two years, the Bank of Canada and the U.S. Federal Reserve have taken drastic steps to cool inflation. While unprecedented interest rate hikes have taken a toll on the Canadian economy, the U.S. economy is booming. We can see this playing out with the divergence between the Canadian dollar and the U.S. […]
It looks like the Bank of Canada will get what it wanted, a soft economic landing, in which growth has slowed considerably but avoided a recession. In less than two years, the Bank of Canada raised interest rates 10 times, from near zero to 5%. In June 2022, Canadian inflation hit its highest level in […]
Canada’s inflation rate continues to surprise to the downside. After unexpectedly cooling to 2.9% in January, economists expected the headline inflation rate to rise to 3.1% in February. That didn’t happen. Instead, Canada’s inflation rate cooled to 2.8%. Mortgage and rent interest costs were the biggest driver of the inflation rate. After a 4% decline […]
Canada’s inflation rate unexpectedly slipped below 3% in January, into the Bank of Canada’s target range of 2% to 3%. There’s still work to do if the central bank wants to get inflation down to 2%, but to do so, it may need to keep interest rates higher for longer. That would be bad news […]
The Bank of Canada delivered a pleasant surprise when it announced that the country’s inflation rate slowed more than expected in January to 2.9%. That’s down sharply from 3.4% in December and is lower than the 3.3% reading economists were looking for and the 3.2% mark forecast by the Bank of Canada. Of particular note, […]
The TSX, Canada’s main stock market index, is made up of some of the largest companies in the country, so it’s natural to expect the performance of the TSX to track Canada’s economic growth. That’s why investors pay close attention to economic gages like gross domestic product (GDP), inflation, employment levels, consumer spending, and the […]
The year 2023 defied expectations for Bay Street and Wall Street. Despite stubbornly high inflation and decades-high interest rates, the U.S. stock market closed out the year with one of its best performances. The S&P 500 advanced 24%, its longest winning streak since 2004, while the Nasdaq soared more than 43%, its highest annual gain […]
