Friday, October 18

Tag: Monetary Policy

What Fed Rate Cuts Mean for Home Buyers in 2024
14Dec By adminNo Comments
Money

What Fed Rate Cuts Mean for Home Buyers in 2024

Getting a mortgage should be slightly less painful in 2024.On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve said it expected to cut interest rates three times next year. The Fed’s forecast brings a dose of holiday cheer to hopeful home buyers who have felt squeezed out of the market.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Europe’s Hawkish Rebellion Will Be Hard to Sustain
14Dec By adminNo Comments
World

Europe’s Hawkish Rebellion Will Be Hard to Sustain

Dec. 14, 2023 11:07 am ETCentral banks in Europe want to push back against the strengthening consensus that 2024 will be a year of interest-rate cuts. They may be swept up by it anyway.Investors expected both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England to leave borrowing costs unchanged Thursday. In this regard, they didn’t disappoint. But their messaging struck a very different tone to that of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell Wednesday. Whereas U.S. officials are openly pivoting and have suggested that rates will be cut many times next year—sparking euphoria in the stock market—their peers across the Atlantic are sticking with a narrative of “higher for longer.”Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Property Crash Draws Short-Sellers. Better Late Than Never.
14Dec By adminNo Comments
Money

Property Crash Draws Short-Sellers. Better Late Than Never.

With interest rate cuts looking more likely, now isn’t an obvious time to make bearish bets on real estate. Luckily for short sellers, the Fed probably won’t move fast enough to wreck their favorite new trade.Mortgage real-estate investment trusts, which offer bridging loans to commercial property owners, have caught the eye of short sellers. Carson Block’s Muddy Waters hedge fund announced a stake in blue chip Blackstone Mortgage Trust last week. Viceroy Research, the fund that previously bet against troubled real-estate stocks SBB and Adler Group, went public with a position in Arbor Realty Trust in mid-November.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Norway Central Bank Surprises With Quarter-Percentage Point Rate Hike to 4.5%
14Dec By adminNo Comments
World

Norway Central Bank Surprises With Quarter-Percentage Point Rate Hike to 4.5%

Norway’s central bank surprised markets by raising its key policy rate Thursday, saying that a final hike in the current cycle was needed to ensure that inflation doesn’t remain too high for an extended period.Norges Bank increased its key policy rate by 25 basis points to 4.50%, versus a Dow Jones poll before the decision that had pointed to an unchanged rate of 4.25%.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Glynn’s Take: Squeeze on Australian Households Worse Than Thought
14Dec By adminNo Comments
World

Glynn’s Take: Squeeze on Australian Households Worse Than Thought

Dec. 13, 2023 9:21 pm ET|WSJ ProSYDNEY—The squeeze on Australian household budgets appears much worse than thought, with a sharp surge in tax payments adding to the pain already being felt from soaring interest rates.For the Reserve Bank of Australia, which outwardly at least still appears hawkish, the pain being felt across suburbia looks set to quash any remaining thoughts of a further rise in interest rates next year.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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U.K. Economy Shrinks, But BOE Unlikely to Be Pushed Into Rapid Rate Cuts 
13Dec By adminNo Comments
World

U.K. Economy Shrinks, But BOE Unlikely to Be Pushed Into Rapid Rate Cuts 

Updated Dec. 13, 2023 3:01 am ETThe U.K. economy shrank a little more than expected in October, though likely not enough to convince the Bank of England to start cutting interest rates from their current elevated levels in the short term.Gross domestic product fell by 0.3% compared with a month earlier, according to preliminary figures set out Wednesday by the Office for National Statistics. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected GDP to contract by 0.1%.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Jay Powell’s Mixed Price Signals
13Dec By adminNo Comments
Health

Jay Powell’s Mixed Price Signals

Everyone expects the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to hold firm on its interest-rate target when it announces the results of its policy meeting on Wednesday, and the latest price signals suggest that’s the right stance. The consumer-price index for November showed Tuesday that inflation still isn’t vanquished, and the Fed will do better to ignore the clamoring on Wall Street and Washington for rate cuts. Consumer inflation rose 0.1% for the month, after not rising at all in October. That’s good news overall, but the price index for the last 12 months is still 3.1% higher. This is a huge relief from the 9.1% inflation peak of June 2022, but it remains higher than the Fed’s target of 2%. There’s still work to be done.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ...
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Money Moves to Make If You’re Expecting the Fed to Lower Interest Rates
12Dec By adminNo Comments
Money

Money Moves to Make If You’re Expecting the Fed to Lower Interest Rates

Updated Dec. 11, 2023 2:21 pm ETPlaying it safe paid off for investors in 2023 better than it has in years. Now, it could be time to take more risk with your money.Americans piled into the safe, guaranteed return provided by cash and cash-like investments in the past year. Money-market funds and high-yield savings accounts each had inflows with households, adding more than $651 billion to money-market funds in the second quarter compared with last year, according to Federal Reserve data.  Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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BOJ Should Raise Interest Rates Before Next Summer, Suntory CEO Says
11Dec By adminNo Comments
World

BOJ Should Raise Interest Rates Before Next Summer, Suntory CEO Says

TOKYO—Takeshi Niinami, chief executive of beverage maker Suntory Holdings and the head of a Japanese business lobby, called on the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates, saying it would help boost the Japanese economy’s productivity and competitiveness.If the Bank of Japan raises interest rates, “the Japanese business community would be ready—which means they should raise interest rates, both long and short,” Niinami said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Monday.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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