Category: Market Action

Yesterday’s BoC policy rate hike continues to cause turmoil for Canadian bonds:

Canadian government bonds extended their slump, pushing two-year yields to the highest since 2013, the day after the Bank of Canada raised interest rates for the first time in seven years and signaled more tightening may be ahead.

Yields rose across maturities. The Canadian dollar was little changed near a one-year high rallying 1.3 percent Wednesday.

While the decision to boost rates was expected by a majority of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, investors were surprised by the Bank of Canada’s effort to downplay weak inflation and signal that the economy’s output gap will close earlier than previously forecast.
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There’s a 74 percent probability that policy makers led by Governor Stephen Poloz will increase rates again this year, according to overnight index swaps data compiled by Bloomberg, which would reverse the two cuts the central bank carried out in early 2015 to counter the effects of falling oil prices. There’s also a 26 percent chance of two additional hikes this year.

Yields fell back a bit as the day wore on – the Canada five-year closed at 1.53%.

The big news of the day was the Canadian policy rate hike, but Yellen’s remarks were also important:

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the U.S. economy should continue to expand over the next few years, allowing the central bank to keep raising interest rates, while also stressing a gradual approach to tightening as the Fed monitors too-low inflation.

“Considerable uncertainty always attends the economic outlook,” Yellen said Wednesday in remarks delivered to the U.S House Financial Services Committee. “There is, for example, uncertainty about when — and how much — inflation will respond to tightening resource utilization.”
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On monetary policy, Yellen didn’t diverge far from the comments she made at a press conference after the June policy meeting. She sounded slightly more cautious on the inflation outlook, while sticking to an expectation for continued rate hikes and maintaining the initiative to begin reducing the Fed’s balance sheet “relatively soon.”

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.24%, equivalent to 6.81% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates now yield a little under 3.85%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread is now 300bp, a slight (and perhaps spurious) widening from the 295bp reported July 12.

Solactive, purveyor of the index upon which ZPR is based, is opening a Toronto office:

Award-winning Solactive is delighted to announce three new key appointments to its management team and the establishment of the first overseas office in Toronto, in addition to the main location in Frankfurt. The new hires include Bernd Henseler as Head of Americas, Stephen Chew as Head of Platform Management and Timo Pfeiffer as Head of Research & Business Development.

These additions come at a time of significant growth for the German index engineer. The past year has indeed been marked by the win of multiple awards and the launch of indices in various categories bringing the number of ETFs linked to its indices up to 250. Now Solactive is ready for the next big step as part of its plans of international expansion, starting with a first branch office in Canada.
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Bernd Henseler has joined Solactive in May 2017 as the Head of Americas with the mandate of overseeing the establishment of the first overseas office in Toronto. This strategic move will allow the company to be closer to its North American customers and easily respond to the growing demand in the region. In this new role, Bernd brings with him many years of experience in the indexing industry as a former Vice President Global Head Channel Management Structured Products at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Jobs, jobs, jobs!

U.S. hiring picked up in June while wage gains disappointed yet again, a mix that may continue to be a puzzle for the economy and policy makers, Labor Department figures showed Friday.

Highlights of Employment (June)

•Payrolls rose 222k (est. 178k); April-May revisions added 47k jobs
•Unemployment rate, derived from a separate survey of households, rose to 4.4% (est. 4.3%) from 16-year low of 4.3%
•Average hourly earnings rose by 0.2% m/m (est. 0.3% rise); up 2.5% y/y (est. 2.6%)

… but there are worries about wages:

While payrolls grew by more than analysts forecast and the unemployment rate barely ticked up from a 16-year low, worker pay rose a less-than-expected 2.5 percent in June from a year earlier. Separate figures on labor flows showed a record number of people found employment after joining the workforce, helping push up the participation rate.

The entry of so many people is a sign that the labor market is still absorbing slack, supporting the views of both President Donald Trump — who has talked about the need to get millions of Americans into jobs — and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, who has mentioned the pool of those who could still find work.

That could help explain part of the puzzle of why hiring has shown sustained strength at the same time that worker pay has been relatively weak. One hope is that a tight labor market will eventually result in an acceleration in wages, but with more people getting into the labor force, that threshold may still be some ways away.

and here in the frozen North:

Canada added more than four times the number of jobs economists had expected in June, capping the best quarter since 2010 and solidifying the view the Bank of Canada will raise interest rates at its meeting next week.

The 45,300 gain was the seventh in a row, taking the jobless rate to 6.5 percent from 6.6 percent, Statistics Canada reported Friday from Ottawa. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected a 10,000 job increase, with the highest prediction at 21,400, and no change in the unemployment rate.

Faster employment growth adds to evidence of a broadening economic recovery. Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz has touted the improvement in recent weeks and signaled it may be time to raise interest rates from extraordinarily low levels.

The BoC has a lot of people convinced there will be a hike next week:

In Canada, there is now an 89 per cent probability of a rate hike next week, marking a radical shift from negligible chances of a rate hike just a month ago.

I’ll go along with that … certainly there has been no back-pedalling by the bank as the market has become progressively more sure that This Is It. But the fat lady hasn’t sung yet … if they stand pat, there will be carnage!

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.16%, equivalent to 6.71% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates now yield about 3.75%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) is now about 295bp, unchanged from the June 28 report.

Canada’s regulatory revolving door has gone around again:

Mark Zelmer has more than 30 years of experience dealing with financial sector policy and regulatory issues. He was formerly an Assistant Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent of Financial Institutions at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI). Prior to that, he worked for the Bank of Canada and the International Monetary Fund.

Among his many accomplishments, Mark was an active contributor to the global regulatory reform agenda in the wake of the financial crisis. As a member of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision from September 2008 through June 2016, he chaired the development of several components of the Basel III framework and led a peer-review assessment of the European Union’s adoption of Basel III capital requirements. He also served on the Financial Stability Board’s Standing Committee on Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation from July 2014 to June 2016 and co-chaired its work on structural vulnerabilities associated with the global asset management industry.

Mark holds a Master of Science (Business Administration) degree from the University of British Columbia and a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) degree from Queen’s University.

Mr. Zelmer was elected to the Board of Directors of Assuris in 2017.

There was another bump in the Canada five-year yield today … to 1.44%

Prop traders are returning to the banks:

“In the last quarter of the year or first quarter of 2018, you will find more people leaving the hedge funds to join banks to run proprietary money,” said Jason Kennedy, chief executive officer of the Kennedy Group in London, which hires for banks and hedge funds. “The banks will become more attractive in terms of jobs and pay.”

That’s due to expectations that Donald Trump will be good for bankers. In a report released June 12, the U.S. Treasury Department urged federal agencies to re-write scores of regulations that Wall Street has frequently complained about in the seven years since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act. They include adjusting the annual stress tests that assess whether lenders can endure economic downturns, loosening some trading rules and paring back the powers of the watchdog that polices consumer finance.
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Hedge funds, stung by years of underperformance and revolts from investors, are increasingly under pressure to dump their traditional 2 percent management and 20 percent performance-fee model, curtailing their ability to hire and retain talent. Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital Management, Tudor Investment Corp., Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, Canyon Capital Advisors and Brevan Howard were among money managers who cut fees last year. More hedge funds shuttered last year than started, a trend that continued in the first quarter of 2017, according to data from Hedge Fund Research Inc.

Global yields continued to rise today:

• •The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose three basis points to 2.30 percent. The rate climbed 16 basis points this week.
• •Benchmark yields in the U.K. increased by one basis point to 1.26 percent and were up 23 basis points this week. German yields gained one basis point to 0.47 percent.

And so the hawks continue to beat the drum for a Canadian policy rate increase:

Statistics Canada released April gross domestic product data on Friday that showed the economy expanded at a 0.2 percent monthly pace, and grew by 3.3 percent over the past 12 months. In a separate report, the Bank of Canada released a survey of business leaders that showed the strongest outlook since 2011.

The GDP figure puts the country on pace for annualized growth of between 2.5 percent and 3 percent in the second quarter, a strong follow-up to a 3.7 percent expansion in the first quarter that was by far the fastest among Group of Seven countries. The business survey, meanwhile, will give Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz more confidence in the sustainability of the expansion as he considers a rate increase.
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The data and more hawkish language is prompting a race by economists and investors to bring forward their expectations for an increase at the central bank’s rate decision July 12. Swaps trading now suggests an 84 percent chance of an increase, up from about 70 percent earlier Friday. Odds are also growing for a second round of tightening later in the year.

Despite another bump in the GOC-5 yield to 1.34%, the Canadian preferred share market didn’t do anything exciting today – another poke in the eye for those who like to talk about cause and effect on a daily basis. No worry, we can all simply nod our heads wisely and talk about “consolidation” and “profit taking”.