Posts tagged as:

interest rates

The dry spell in bank dividends in Canada is officially over.  Although Laurentian had raised its dividend shortly after the worst of the crisis was over, it’s not usually considered one of the Big 5 or even Big 6, the members of which are heavily owned by a majority of Canadians through pension plans, RRSPs [...]

-

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Predicting where the stock market will go in February might be a lesson in futility more than futurity, but that doesn’t mean we can’t pay close attention to what the analysts are looking out for – and other key pieces of market news such as earnings, announcements from the Fed, levels of consumer credit card [...]

-

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Highest ever one-month inflation rise in the UK for December, fiscal imbalances in Greece, weakened macro-economics in Germany, a Canadian housing market bubble, higher than 50% gains in the commodity currencies since last March (2009), and the return of hubris and risk-taking in the U.S. investment banks… what do these all have in common?
Is it [...]

-

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

With long-term U.S. bond yields rising and much of the recovery seemingly in place, analysts are increasingly wondering when the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) will begin to implement its quantitative easing exit strategy and start raising interest rates.
Currently the Fed baseline interest rate fluctuates between zero (0) and 0.25%and has done so since late [...]

-

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Option ARMs are the new subprime.  Option ARMs stand for “payment-option adjustable-rate mortgages” – so-called because the rate paid on the mortgage varies with the market, but the total payment can be adjusted by the borrower according to his or her needs.  How’s that for a sweet deal?  It’s good right now, because interest rates [...]

-

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

It wasn’t surprising at $1000/oz, but even at $1100/oz this week, the naysayers are still in full force.  What’s to deny about the trend in gold prices?  You don’t have to be a gold bug to see what’s happening.
Here are the six main factors causing the price of gold to continue to rise.  In some [...]

-

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Here’s a graph showing the amount of “excess” (beyond required amounts) reserves held by U.S. banks.  It covers quite a span of time, but it’s the best-looking one I found showing the relevant data.  The graph also gives just a bit of sense of the extent of the unprecedented nature of money-pumping going on at [...]

-

{ Comments on this entry are closed }