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Market Brief, North America

All talk, no action in markets

The dollar is staging a modest rebound after a cast of hawkish Fed speakers worked to put the rate cut genie back in the bottle yesterday. In a series of appearances, Bowman, Goolsbee and Logan all noted that inflation remained too high and the labour market was still healthy by pre-pandemic standards, and Neel Kashkari told Bloomberg there’d been “no discussion” of lowering interest rates among policymakers. Bets on at least four quarter-point cuts by early 2025 slipped slightly through the session, and Treasury yields retraced some of their gains. More Fedspeak is in the offing today: Traders are expecting...

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Fedspeak back in driver’s seat

 Aaaaannd we’re back. Ten-year Treasuries are again yielding more than 4.63 percent and the dollar is up after the Minneapolis Federal Reserve’s Neel Kashkari warned rates might have further to climb in the months ahead. “Before we declare that we’re absolutely done, we’ve solved the problem, let’s get more data and see how the economy evolves,” he told Fox News yesterday, “We need to let the data keep coming to us to see if we really have got the inflation genie back in the bottle”. As if to punctuate Kashkari’s point, the Reserve Bank of Australia last night set a...

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Peak rates optimism delivers market relief

Markets are steadying after last week’s stunning rally. Equity and commodity futures are edging higher ahead of the North American open, the dollar is trading near a six-week low, and Treasury yields are lower across the curve, with the ten-year trading at 4.59 percent after breaking the 5 percent barrier in late October. To sum up last week’s events: the Treasury said it would push less bond supply into markets than had been feared, the Federal Reserve turned slightly more dovish, and Friday’s jobs report showed labour markets showing clear signs of easing, giving the central bank further room to...

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Directional momentum slows into US payrolls report

Happy non-farm payrolls day, to all who celebrate. Ahead of the most important release on the monthly economic calendar, markets are working to demolish the Federal Reserve’s “higher for longer” narrative. Investors, apparently comforted by Jerome Powell’s words during Wednesday’s post-meeting press conference, have dramatically lowered odds on another interest rate hike in the coming months, and have moved to add two rate cuts to 2024 – in addition to the two already priced in. After breaking above 5 percent for the first time since 2007 last week, ten-year Treasury yields have lost almost 35 basis points, marking one of...

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Fed pivot hopes boost markets

Yesterday’s Federal Reserve decision was seen as tilting dovish, with a newfound emphasis on “tighter financial conditions” taken to mean that higher bond yields are negating the need for further rate hikes. Ten-year government bond yields fell below 4.75 percent for the first time since mid-October, extending a move that began earlier in the session when the Treasury Department said it would ramp up issuance more slowly, and accelerated after the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index tumbled more than expected. Equities gained, and the dollar fell against all of its major counterparts. This was to be expected: several officials,...

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