The Bank of Canada (BoC) held its policy rate steady last week, as was universally expected, and it also issued a statement that outlined its current view of how both domestic and foreign forces are impacting our economic momentum. The Bank knows that its words are carefully parsed, and in today’s post I’ll highlight the key phrases that it used in its latest statement and offer my take on the implications for our mortgage rates.

It’s time to take another look at a mortgage question that is as old as the hills: Should you go with a fixed or variable mortgage rate? In today’s post I outline the key points for and against each option and offer my take on which one is likely to save you money over the next five years.

We received the latest Canadian and U.S. employment data last week. The Canadian economy added only 3,200 new jobs last month, which was below the 10,000 new jobs that the consensus had been expecting. While the latest headline number disappointed, the long-term trends for our job growth are still robust (we have averaged 22,000 new jobs over the past twelve months).

We have now entered a period of rising uncertainty and at times like this, money flows into safe-haven assets like Government of Canada (GoC) bonds as the return of one’s capital becomes a more pressing concern than the return on one’s capital. That rise in demand should help keep GoC bond yields, and the fixed-mortgage rates they are priced on, at today’s ultra-low levels. Today's post explains.

The recent surge in Canadian GDP growth has fueled speculation that the Bank of Canada may begin to raise interest rates sooner than expected. Today’s post takes a detailed look at the Bank’s most recent assessment of our economy's health and offers my take on the implications for both our fixed and variable mortgage rates.

Last week we received the latest Canadian and U.S. employment reports and the data continue to confound market watchers. The unemployment rates in both countries are at levels that should be pushing average incomes higher as the demand for labour outstrips its supply, but that isn’t happening. Instead, low unemployment levels in both countries have corresponded with wage increases that are hovering close to the overall level of price inflation. Today's post offers some insight into the cause of this conundrum.