PrefBlog

Good US jobs number:

U.S. employers added more workers to payrolls than forecast in December and the jobless rate declined to an almost three-year low, showing that the labor market gained momentum heading into 2012.

The 200,000 increase followed a revised 100,000 rise in November that was smaller than first estimated, Labor Department figures showed in Washington. The median projection in a Bloomberg News survey called for a December gain of 155,000. The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 8.5 percent, the lowest since February 2009, while hours worked and earnings climbed.

Less rosy is Canada’s employment news:

Canada’s unemployment rate (CANLXEMR) rose for a third month in December, the longest advance in two years, as a gain in jobs trailed growth of the labor force.

The jobless rate increased to 7.5 percent from November’s 7.4 percent and the recent low of 7.1 percent in September, Statistics Canada said today in Ottawa. Employment (CANLNETJ) rose by 17,500, the first gain in three months. Over the past six months, the number of jobs has grown by 7,400, compared with a gain of 191,800 in the first half of 2011.

Fitch has joined the other major agencies – Hungary is junk:

Fitch became the third ratings agency to downgrade Hungary’s debt to “junk” status on Friday, invoking further deterioration in the country’s fiscal and external financing and growth outlook and the government’s “unorthodox” economic policies.

Banks in euro zone countries have significant exposure to Hungary, with Austrian financial institutions having more than $40 billion in the country, Italian banks nearly $25 billion, German banks a little over $20 billion and Belgian banks over $15 billion, according to figures by the Bank of International Settlements and ING estimates.
…
Earlier on Friday, controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orban said both his government and the central bank want a fast deal with the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF, the EU and the ECB have criticized the Hungarian government for wanting to curb the central bank’s independence.

Since coming to power in 2010, Orban’s government took over private pension funds, set a fixed exchange rate for loans in foreign currency taken during the boom years before 2008 — forcing banks to take the losses due to the national currency’s depreciation — and imposed the biggest tax in Europe on banks, sparking investors’ protests.

Fitch said the government’s policies, popular with voters but which have prompted foreign investors’ fury and have attracted international criticism, were part of the reason for the downgrade.

Officials at OSFI are taking steps to help their future employers retain hegemony over Canadian financial markets:

OSFI strongly believes additional exemptions from the restrictions on proprietary trading should be given to foreign government securities, at least for banking groups whose parent bank is located outside of the US. Many foreign banks play important market-making roles in the trading of government securities in their home jurisdictions. They also actively rely on government securities of their home jurisdiction to efficiently manage their liquidity and funding requirements at a global enterprise-wide level; a practice that will be further reinforced in the future by new bank liquidity requirements that have been proposed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Thus, OSFI believes a failure to include these additional exemptions at least for banking entities whose parent bank is located outside of the US would undermine the liquidity of government debt markets outside of the US and could significantly impede the ability of foreign banks to efficiently manage their liquidity and funding requirements at an enterprise-wide level.

It was another very good day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts winning 39bp (won’t be too many of the them left soon!), FixedResets up 10bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 26bp. I remain on tenterhooks waiting to see whether the Bozo Spread (Current Yield PerpetualDiscounts less Current Yield FixedResets) will go negative! There was good volatility, with insurance DeemedRetractibles doing quite well. Volume remains low after the holiday break.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2012 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.