The National Bank of Canada

FACTS: For an eleventh month in a row, housing starts exceeded 200K units at an annual rate in October (top chart), reaching 204.1K, a 19.9K or 8.9% decrease from September. In October, urban starts...

With the U.S. elections behind us, the situation in Europe and the American fiscal cliff are now front and centre in investors' minds. European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi stated...

Several economic indicators made waves in the currency markets last week. To everyone’s surprise, on Wednesday we learned that Canada’s GDP reading for August was much lower than expected,...

On the eve of the U.S. presidential election, the most recent surveys place the incumbent barely 1% ahead of challenger Mitt Romney. The first Obama mandate was marked by historic levels of government...

Canada – In August, real GDP shrank 0.1%. Weakness was relatively broad based with only eight of the 19 sectors showing gains–the worst such ratio since the last recession. Goods...

The U.S. employment report showed an encouraging upturn in job creation in October. The private sector added 184,000 net new payroll jobs during the month, the best performance since last February. At...

The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy remained the focus of media attention Friday morning. According to the most recent estimate from Eqecat, which specializes in damage assessment, the total bill will...

FACTS: Total employment was up 1.8K in October following a surge of 52.1K in September. Full-time jobs were up 7.3K while part-time jobs decreased 5.5K. Employment in the goods-producing sector was...

Global stock markets have generally trended up since June as the anticipation of monetary stimulus prompted a return of risk-taking. While liquidity injections by central banks in Japan and China and...

Everything is slowly getting back to normal on the U.S. east coast. Markets were back in force yesterday, to the great relief of investors who were able to rebalance their positions for month end....

FACTS: Real GDP decline 0.1% in August, following a 0.2% increase in July. The goods sector (-0.5%) fell sharply, after increasing 0.2% the month before. Among good producing sectors, Utilities...

While yesterday was relatively calm here in Montreal, Hurricane Sandy continued her march inland south of the border. It appears that the U.S. east coast and its financial nerve centre on Wall Street...

FACTS: The Institut de la statistique du Québec reports a record $2.44-billion trade deficit for Quebec in August, up $639 million from July (top chart). The value of exports fell $207 million...

Media and investor attention is focused on Hurricane Sandy and the damages it is causing. American stock markets will be closed for a second consecutive day. The last time markets were closed for two...

The past few weeks have not been easy for global equity markets. The MSCI all-country index is down 0.7% so far this quarter, led by a 1.8% decline in the North American index. While it is true that...

In contrast to comments he made in British Columbia the week before, Mark Carney’s Opening Statement on monetary policy mentioned that the BoC is still ready to increase the key interest rate,...