If the Bank of Canada is “decidedly data dependant” as it claims, then it should end speculation about near-term rate hikes when it meets this Wednesday.

There are factors beyond BoC Governor Poloz’s control that are preventing him from raising the policy rate to a neutral-rate level. Today's post explains.

In today's post I explain why the bond market essentially yawned at last week's banner Canadian employment headline (for January)

The U.S. Federal Reserve just took a sharp monetary-policy turn and its move has implications for both our fixed and variable Canadian mortgage rates.

Today's post provides an update on the three key areas that the Bank of Canada is monitoring to determine when additional rate hike will be appropriate.

Last week was a relatively quiet one on the interest-rate front. Government of Canada bond yields, which our fixed mortgage rates are priced on, edged a little higher, but five-year fixed rates continued to fall among laggard lenders who had not already lowered to match RBC’s recent cut. Last Friday we received our latest inflation data, and while it showed an uptick in our overall Consumer Price Index (CPI), from 1.7% in November to 2.0% in December, most of that bump was caused by a spike in the cost of airfares and fresh vegetables. That isn’t likely to cause much concern at the Bank of Canada because its three key measures of core inflation, which strip out the inputs that cause short-term volatility in overall CPI, all held […]

The Bank of Canada expects our economy to slow over the first half of 2019 before resuming its prior growth rate, but I noted a glaring omission in its forecast.

Today's post offers my forecast for Canadian mortgage rates in 2019. (Spoiler alert: I expect that rates are headed lower, but be careful what you wish for.)