PrefBlog

Inflation news from the US was positive:

The Consumer Price Index climbed 3.4 percent in April, down from 3.5 percent in March, the Labor Department said Wednesday. The “core” index — which strips out volatile food and fuel prices in order to give a sense of the underlying trend — rose 3.6 percent last month, down from 3.8 percent a month earlier. It was the lowest annual increase in core inflation since early 2021.
…
Had the data come in hotter than anticipated yet again, it could have led policymakers to conclude that high rates needed more time to bring inflation to heel. Speaking at an event in Amsterdam on Tuesday, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, reiterated that recent inflation readings had made him more cautious about cutting rates.

“We did not expect this to be a smooth road, but these were higher than I think anybody expected,” he said. “What that has told us is that we will need to be patient and let restrictive policy do its work.”
…
Wednesday’s report showed improvement in some of the categories that had driven the recent uptick in inflation. Health insurance costs, which jumped in March, rose more slowly in April. Car insurance rates, too, rose more slowly, although still at an uncomfortably rapid clip.

But prices in one key part of the economy remained stubborn: housing. For more than a year, forecasters have been predicting that the government’s measure of housing inflation would ease, citing private-sector data showing rent increases slowing.

Instead, housing costs in the Consumer Price Index have continued to rise more quickly than before the pandemic, a pattern that continued in April.

The Five-year Canada yield dropped to 3.67%.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 6.49%, equivalent to 8.44% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates yielded 5.19% on 2024-5-10 and since then the closing price of ZLC has changed from 14.76 to 14.98, an increase of 149bp in price, implying a decrease of yields of 12bp (BMO reports a duration of 12.32, but don’t disclose whether this is Macaulay or Modified; I will assume Modified) to 5.07%. Therefore, the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) has narrowed slightly (and perhaps spuriously) to 335bp from the 340bp reported May 1.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 15th, 2024 at 9:08 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.