The National Bank of Canada

On Friday, the International Monetary Fund lowered its forecast for growth in the U.S. in 2014 from 3% to 2.7%. The stated reason was that the Federal Reserve should be able to better control...

Canada – In May, housing starts rose to a consensus topping seasonally adjusted annual rate of 200.2K, up 13.8% from the upwardly revised 175.9K pace set in April. The increase was supported in...

Overnight Thursday, Asian markets saw a timid rally, putting an end to a rather demoralizing week. It will be interesting to see whether the purge is truly over on Monday morning, or if this was...

We are not talking about the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals (which went into triple overtime) but rather about Asian markets that, after a lull on Wednesday, caused trading screens to go red....

The Nikkei was down by only 0.21% early this morning; however, volatility is still high on the USD/JPY pair, with the intraday range hitting 220 points yesterday. Yields on the 10-year U.S. bonds...

The Bank of Japan undoubtedly caused many investors to have a sleepless night as most were anticipating an increase in the BoJ’s level of intervention, which had until now been effective in...

On Friday we learned that the Canadian economy created 95,000 new jobs last month, the best performance since August 2002. In the process, Canada’s unemployment rate fell slightly from 7.2% to...

Chinese Inflation and Industrial Production figures for May were announced Monday night, and proved slightly disappointing. In contrast, Japan saw a leap of 4.1% in its annualized GDP for the first...

Thursday started off calmly, but ended with the greenback taking a dive against all major currencies, plunging 2.43%, 1.24% and 0.97% against the yen, euro and loonie respectively. The fall began at...

Yesterday was a tough one for commodity currencies against the greenback. The AUD, NZD and CAD, whose economies all depend heavily on raw material exports, lost 1.44%, 1.51% and 0.61% respectively on...

Tuesday was a tough one for commodity currencies against the greenback. The AUD, NZD and CAD, whose economies all depend heavily on raw material exports, lost 1.44%, 1.51% and 0.61% respectively on...

Some areas on the Old Continent, particularly Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic received the equivalent of two months of rainfall over the weekend, leading to flooding and landslides. Initial...

Bottom line: On May 23, uranium producer Areva’s Somair mine near Arlit in Niger, as well as a military base in neighbouring Agadez, were the target of twin suicide bomb attacks. The operation...

Last Wednesday, Mark Carney gave his last speech as Governor of the Bank of Canada. He said that the Bank’s monetary policy should remain stable for some time, with the key interest rate at 1%....

Canada: GDP grew 2.5% annualized in the first quarter of 2013, two-ticks higher than consensus expectations, after an upwardly revised +0.9% print in the prior quarter. In Q1, the economy got a boost...

The Bank of Australia announced its key interest rate decision and, as expected, was maintained at 2.75%. However, the statement that accompanied this decision revealed that Australia’s...