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Economic Impact

To keep you informed and stimulate your thinking, Stéfane Marion and Denis Girouard take a look at economic news and share their perspectives in our monthly informative videos.

Hello everyone. Welcome to Economic Impact. Today is September 10th, 2024 and as usual, I am with our Chief Economist, Stéfane Marion. Good morning, Stéfane.

Good morning, Denis.

So, since the last time, we see the performance from the asset classes being a bit different. Since the last time.

Since we last time we saw each other, was in July at the beginning of Q3, right, all asset classes were rising. We were arguing for potential volatility. And now near the end of Q3, we can see this volatility has actually occurred, or more dispersion I should say with respect to the total returns of different asset classes. Note that the S&P TSX was really trailing behind all the other equity indices, actually leading in the third quarter, but followed by the bond market. And maybe the biggest difference, Denis, is the underperformance or lack of performance, negative performance from the S&P 500. So that's a big change from the start of the third quarter.

And because of that, we saw the volatility increasing quite a lot.

Well, yeah, you know, the negative return was triggered by a surge in volatility in August. Note on this slide that if you exclude the pandemic episode, we haven't seen volatility - VIX - at 40 since 2015. So about a decade, 9 years. And that means Denis that people are now second guessing what the actual outlook will be like. I would just remind you that at this point in time, there's still 80% of investors that are bidding on a soft economic soft landing for the US. We'll see what happens. But clearly there are some investors saying, well, maybe things are not so clear cut going forward.

Yeah. And I think the Fed not decreasing rates makes that volatility is getting higher and higher because, you know, people are expecting those rates going down and they're not coming down.

Yeah. Do you know how long it's been since the Fed last cut rates, Denis?

Long, long time.

Well, since their last rate hike, it's been now 12 months. Historically, that's very, very long because on average, the Fed will cut rate seven months after its last rate hike. Now it's been a year. We're going to get one probably in September. But note on this slide, what the big difference is between this time around and previous cycle is that the unemployment rate is up almost a full percentage point. Well, 0.7 percentage point, which is much bigger in terms of amplitude than what you normally see in a typical cycle, which is the blue line on this slide.

Is that what we call the SAHM rules?

If you want to speak to economics jargon on that one. OK, fine. I'll summarize what the SAHM rule is. I'll simplify it. Normally when the unemployment rate that rises 1/2 percentage point above its cyclical low, you trigger what you call the SAHM rule. And historically it's been associated with a significant slow down of the economy and more often than not a recession. So the SAHM rule was actually triggered last July, which brought this volatility that we got in August on the stock market. Now, as I said before, most people still believe all the SAHM rule is misleading us this time around. Maybe the soft landing is still the typical outcome because even the Fed argues that they can achieve a soft landing despite being very late in the game in terms of cutting rates.

And despite the fact that about the Fed are not, you know, moving down on their rates, global inflation is still creeping down.

Now, I will concede that the Fed is able to cut rates now and maybe they will be able to cut rates aggressively because inflation is coming down. As you can attest on this slide, you know, it's a global phenomenon. It's not just a Fed that will be coming cutting rates. It's a whole bunch of central banks. And under the circumstances, if it's a synchronized easing cycle, people believe that, there you go, you're going to get this economic soft landing and earnings won't be impacted negatively.

And at the same time, you know, we're seeing the economy cooling. That means that, you know, earnings and revision may come.

 Inflation does not come down by magic, Denis. So basically, what that means is that for inflation to come down, you have to get slower economic growth. And if you get slower economic growth and you keep monetary policy restrictive, you can get an accident. You know, at some point in time, as you'll see on this slide, the blue line shows that global manufacturing activity is now contracting again. And historically this has been associated with downward earnings revision. So again, the market is priced for perfection right now because you're training at high multiples and the assumption is that, you know, mission accomplished by the central banks, you'll get this economic soft landing and no impact on earnings. But I think an impact, a negative impact is coming if you can gauge on historical relationship between activity and earnings revision.

But then earning growth expectation will have to come down because right now they are still pretty high.

 Yeah. And remember we spoke to this back in July and say, listen, this is a bit high. It was expectations of 14% over the next 12 months. It's been revised a little bit down, but you're still expecting 12%. That's the red zone or pink zone on this slide. 12%, you know earnings per share growth globally, but note that every region in the world is showing a positive uptrend on earnings despite the fact that monetary policy remains restrictive. So we're going to get these rate cuts Denis, but monetary policy is not becoming accommodative anytime soon. So you're going to get below potential growth, which I think will impact earnings.

More to come then on that front.

I think so, yeah.

OK. If we come back to Canada, then you know, GDP still pretty high, but consumption, personal consumption are not there.

Yeah. So, if you focus of course on GDP, you'll say, ah, it was a better outcome than expected, but that's because government accounted for 50% of growth in the second quarter. If you look at consumer spending, the red line on this slide is pretty anemic, Denis. So, and that's impressive when you consider that population growth continues to surge in 2024. So to get the surge in population growth, this and only 0.6% growth in consumption means that your economy is not performing very well. So things are not better than elsewhere in Canada. It's actually it's a pretty tame GDP outcome in Q2.

Would you say that at this time, even if the Bank of Canada lowers rate, you know, before the Fed, they're not lowering fast enough to bring the consumption back?

It's a good question. I mean, the reason consumer spending is so weak is because households must devote 25% of wage increases to servicing their debt because interest rates are much higher than they were a few years ago. So considering all that, considering that inflation's coming down, there's going to be rate cuts. But at the end of the day, what you can see on this slide is that despite the fact that the Bank of Canada has cut rates already twice, the policy rate adjusted for inflation is barely coming down. So, monetary policy remains the most restrictive since 2006. Denis, what that means is expect slower growth in Canada and a higher unemployment rate, which will probably lead the Bank of Canada to accelerate the pace of rate cuts in the coming weeks. So yes, there will be collateral damage to the Canadian economy in the coming weeks. So but the good news, inflation is coming down. They can cut down to cut the rates aggressively, but there's still going to be an impact on earnings in Canada as there will be a negative impact elsewhere in the world.

Would you say that the Bank of Canada don't cut rate as much as they should because of the Fed not starting to do so?

You're right that they were probably a little bit shy of going more aggressively, but probably concerns about the Canadian dollar. But at this point in time, you know U.S. dollar has been weak. So Canadian dollar as hell is ground. So I think that opens the door for more aggressive rate cuts in Canada. Actually, our fixed income strategist who recently published their monthly and we're showing an acceleration of the pace of rate cuts from the Canadian perspective in the months ahead.

OK, now we said all of that. What do you expect has returned from different asset classes.

Investment conclusion, right. So well, Denis, if you trigger the SAHM rule, I'm sorry, historically it's not good for risk assets. So, historically 3 months following the triggering of the SAHM rule and note that this is one of the first time the Fed has not even cut rates despite the triggering of the Fed SAHM rule. You can see that the stock market whether it's the US or Canada, it's down about 9%. The only asset classes that play a defensive role would be gold prices and the US dollar. Gold because more volatility, the US dollar because more risk off environment and clearly the bond market is also somewhere to hide. So investment conclusion, Denis, I think there's going to be more volatility this fall as people reassess their earnings expectation. So it's time to be play a bit more defensive in our opinion. And just those US elections coming up, most uncertainty about policies, keep that in mind also.

Well, thank you, Stéfane, and thank you for being with us today. And above all, we expect to be with you next month, beginning of October. Have a good day. Thank you.

Property Perspective

Our National Bank specialists decode the latest trends in the real estate market, including interest rates, the resale market and forecasts for the coming months.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the September 25th edition of Property Perspective. Today I have the pleasure to be with Matthieu Arseneau.

Hi Simon.

Hello Matthieu.

And with Veronique Corriveau, hello Veronique. Our topic of the day real estate and estate planning. But before we go into that interesting discussion with Veronique, um, let's talk with Matthieu about recent economic news that influence the real estate market. Matthieu, while the Bank of Canada slowly lowered its policy rate over the summer, announcing cuts of 25 basis points, the Federal Reserve, I believe, surprised the economist by announcing a cut of no less than 50 basis points in the first announcement in September. What pace of cut can we expect from the Bank of Canada now that the Fed has entered the dance. 

Yes, Simon that was a surprising one to that the Fed is going with the 50 basis point with the start of. So in this easing cycle that we are getting into, clearly it opens the door for the Bank of Canada to do more. If the if the Fed hadn't declined rates, it can have an impact when you decline rates on currency, pushing it down and ultimately lead to inflation. So when both central banks are going in the same direction, there's no impact on that front. And that opened the door for the Bank of Canada to go ahead perhaps with and I hope will be inspired by that kind of move. So increasing maybe 50 basis point cuts in the next meeting. Let's hope they will go in that direction. Clearly when we are looking at the inflation data a big milestone in August with the data that came out inflation at 2% on an annual basis, that's the goal of the Central Bank. So that was really good news. And if you exclude mortgage interest costs, we know the Central Bank is mainly responsible of that increase for that component. So if you exclude that component, we are only 1.2%. So for us clearly rates at those restrictive levels, it's not a good idea in the short term and they should decline rates faster over the next couple of meetings to bring back inflation rates much more neutral in the coming months.

Finally good news.

Good news on interest rate front, yeah.

Matthieu, we saw that controlling inflation has not come without economic cost, as evidenced by the rising unemployment rate. How do you assess the economic health of the labour market recently?

Exactly. It's not magic. Inflation has moderated because there's economic weakness. And when we look at the unemployment rate, in fact, it continued to increase during the summer and it's now at 6.6%. Not that high on historical basis, but still higher than it was prior to the pandemic. But there's not that much layoff at this point. It's much more hiring freeze on the macro perspective with corporations not hiring and a big increase in population. So as a result, it's the segment of population who tried to enter the labour market that are the most impacted at this point. If we look at the unemployment rate for people at the younger ones and recent immigrants, in fact, the cumulative increase since 2022 is as large as what we experienced during the global financial crisis of 2008, 2009. So for those segments of population is comparable to a recession at this point. So, and my concern Simon is the fact that job vacancy rates so are declining very fast. So that does not bode well for hiring in the coming months. In fact, it's the lowest since 2016, 2017 for those segments of population. So it's a, it's a warning for the Central Bank. Perhaps interest rates at those current levels are too high for the health of the labour market. As I recall unemployment rate at 6.6%, that was the level back in 2017 and rates were at 0.5% versus 4.25% at this point. So yes, I'm not saying that they should go there, but perhaps between 2.5% and 3%, very soon, that could be a good idea so we won't have too much damage on the labour market.

OK, remains to be seen. Matthieu, last question, what do you think of the government's latest announcement about raising the ceiling of insured mortgages from $1M to $1.5M and also giving first time buyers the option of repaying their loans over 30 years versus 25 years? Is it a good solution to the affordability challenges? We discussed a lot this affordability challenge over the past few months. For the first measure, the increase of the ceiling, we won't we don't expect that much impact because most of the transactions are way below this this threshold. So that's for this measure. For the other one, that could have material impact on the market, we made some calculations, and you can see the amounts are a bit different depending on the province, but just a general picture. For the same house, in fact, if you increase the amortization from 25 to 30 years, you have a decline of payment of 9% on a monthly basis. And if you maintain the same, the same payment, you can buy a house 10% higher in terms of price. So that gives you a leeway. But the big question here is, is it more affordable when you pay your mortgage for a longer period? So that's the first question. And if this option became very popular at some point, there could be an adjustment in prices given this increase in purchasing power of first-time home buyers and it will reverse the initial intentions. So that's, that's the tricky part. No evident solution with that kind of measure.

Alright Matthieu, thank you very much for your very, as usual, interesting comments. Thank you. Let's now discuss with Veronique, hello Veronique.

Hello.

About the real estate as part of the estate planning process, many of us put off these important decisions thinking that they are either too complex or not necessary. Yet when the time comes, navigating the legal and also emotional aspect of passing down property down can feel overwhelming. Veronique, a notary of extensive experience is here to shed light on the basics and help us take the first step toward thoughtful thinking. To start, can you please explain why having a will is so important, especially when real estate is involved?

Yeah, it's important to have a will to ensure that we do not leave our wishes to chance. Having a will allows the testator to decide for himself who will inherit his property and to choose the person or the people who will administrate the property in the process of liquidating an estate. For example, in the case of common law partners, if you die without a will, your partner could find himself co-owner of the building with your legal heirs. It's not perfect.

You could say that. Véronique, one of the key aspects of estate planning is the transfer, obviously, of ownership after someone passes away. Can you quickly walk us through the process of transferring real estate ownership from a deceased person to their heirs?

When you inherit real estate, the liquidator of the estate must transfer the title of the property. This is what we call in legal language the "declaration of transmission". By this act, the succession transfers the property right to the heirs, so the new owner of the building. It is a myth that we often have to deconstruct that the transfer does not take place automatically in the will. This act formalizes everything.

OK. Finally, Véronique, what specific considerations should heirs be aware of when inheriting real estate are there some challenges, pitfalls that they should be prepared for?

I can give you some examples. We can think of the co-ownership of real estate. For example, in this situation we should think about how they will administer the property together. Sometimes we can see some family dynamics in this kind of situation. We can also think of bequests of a building to minor children. If the bequest was made with or without a protection mechanism. This situation can complicate the administration of the child's property, and we have to think for the tax aspect too. It can bring us for example, a lack of liquidity when we put heirs in an unknown situation for the for the taxes.

You're right, so important to consider. So thank you Véronique for sharing your insights today. Estate planning, especially when it involves a real estate as we just saw, can be overwhelming at times. But as we discussed, taking the time to plan ahead can make a world of difference for your loved ones. We hope today's conversation has helped clarify the process of estate planning and real estate transfers and don't hesitate to discuss that important topic with your advisor. So thank you all for watching and see you in the next weeks for your next edition of Property Perspective. Thank you.

5 • 4 • 3 Market Outlook

5 minutes, 4 graphs, 3 key takeaways! Discover a fresh focused quarterly review of markets, the economy and investments with expert Louis Lajoie from our CIO Office.

Hello, everyone. Today is September 10. We're going to take stock of how the markets and the economy have evolved over the last few months and what that likely means for what's to come. So if we begin by looking at how the equity market has behaved year to date. We remember that in Q1, we had a very substantial upsurge in equity markets, followed by in Q2 a somewhat more hesitant price action. And in Q3, so far, it has been much more volatile, although equity markets remain largely positive year to date. But what's new here is that bonds have actually been doing some catch up against the rest of the market, now actually even above what cash has returned year today. So as you can see, the race is tightening across asset classes.

And the key factor behind that is actually what we've been talking about for some time, a further slowdown in the labour market, featuring an increase in the unemployment rates, which to be clear remains far from being dramatic, just barely above 4%. But what's more worrisome is that historically, whenever the unemployment rate begins to rise, it usually keeps on rising, especially when we reach a certain threshold, which we did, and reaching above the Sahm rule, which is a recession indicator that's never been mistaken since the 1950s.

Now, I want to be clear: the U.S. economy is still too strong to be deemed in a recession. But what's equally clear is that the warning signal has been heard at the Fed. And indeed, we've seen markets review their rates expectation accordingly much lower and indeed, in all likelihood will see a first rate cut by the U.S. Federal Reserve this month. Now, if we know that now that the Fed's about to begin cutting rates, the follow up questions is where is it going to stop? And right now, markets expect the Fed to stop somewhere in the neutral range, which is totally reasonable against the current backdrop. But bear in mind that if we were to base our expectations simply on the average response from the Fed following a similar rise in the unemployment rate, we would instead be talking about a policy rate that could be close to 2%. That is essentially where it was just before the pandemic. And I want to be clear again, we're not there yet. That's not the base case here. But we should expect rate expectations to move quite a bit over the coming in the coming few months.

If we do the exact same or similar actually exercise with how the equity markets have fared around previous rises in the unemployment rate, what we see is that on average, stocks were already on the downtrend, a downtrend that typically continues for a few more months only to see stocks bounce back and finish the year positive, as you can see here. And obviously that's not the exact path that current markets are following. Stocks are actually on an uptrend this time around. And it's not all that surprising either that we're not following that pattern to the letter, knowing that there's a wide range of historical path behind that average featuring, for instance, both an increase and a drop of nearly 40% at some time. So I guess both optimists and pessimists can conclude what they want here. But in their mind, this all boils down to a backdrop in the near term that's probably more fragile for stocks, without necessarily meaning that this story will end up with losses over a one-year horizon. Hence why it will be important for investors to stay the course in the face of inevitable ups and downs that are ahead of us.

To conclude, so as I said earlier, the overall picture is a rather positive one for markets and especially so for bonds with the last quarter that, you know, recoup some of their losses or actually lost ground against the rest of the market. Even now beating cash in the face of an increase in unemployment rate, which has confirmed that the Fed is about to cut its policy rate as we have seen elsewhere in the world, including here in Canada. And for investors, it likely means a volatile year end. But the good news here is that with inflation now taking the backseat – note that I didn't talk about inflation, I believe that's a first –, we can better rely on bonds to play their diversification role should the economic backdrop deteriorate further.

That's it for today. Thank you for listening and we will talk again in December.

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