Market Brief, North America

Consumer price growth avoided a widely-feared acceleration in the United States last month, giving the Federal Reserve room to adopt a slightly more accommodative stance in the months to come. According to data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning, the core consumer price index—with highly-volatile food and energy prices excluded—climbed 2.5 percent in the year ending in January, matching consensus estimates among economists polled by the major data providers ahead of the release, and was up 0.2 percent from December. On a headline all-items basis, prices rose 2.4 percent year-over-year—slower than the 2.5 percent expected in markets—and...

Good morning. The dollar is edging lower even after yesterday’s stronger-than-expected jobs data drove a hawkish repricing in US growth and monetary policy expectations. Treasury yields are holding steady, North American equity indices are setting up for a mixed open, and most major currency pairs—including the Australian and Canadian dollars, the British pound, and the euro—are trading within tightly-defined ranges. January’s headline payrolls figure came in nearly double consensus forecasts and unemployment fell unexpectedly, reducing market-implied odds of an early rate cut, lifting 10-year yields and triggering a sharp dollar rally. The surface details looked positive: 130,000 new jobs against...