With most global market closed for Christmas holiday, and traders taking the day and the week off, global stocks traded mixed in thin, subdued conditions as the dollar dipped against the yen, with the USDJPY sliding for a fourth straight day to 117, while the EUR was flat at 1.0450, taking stock of the US 10Y yield which closed lower on Friday.
2016 was chock-full of surprises, both in markets and in politics.
As Goldman's Allison Nathan explains, the year began with a perfect storm of worries that had become all too familiar already in 2015. Oil prices plunged and fears of faltering growth and a sharp depreciation of China’s currency escalated, driving disruptive sell-offs in credit and other risk assets. Confidence in global growth faltered, particularly after an anemic US GDP report for Q1.
Consumer spending makes up a large percentage of the United States economy. We all have bills to pay and mouths to feed, but where do Americans spend their money? Here is a breakdown of how Americans spent their money in the last 75 years...
As MacLean's Jason Kirby points out, the Bank has taken to YouTube to warn Canadians about the dangers of too much debt and unrealistic house price expectations. He wonders, however, whether anyone will listen as one after another real estate bubble form in Canada, a nation whose household debt ratio has never been higher.
As BMO pointed out, when the latest household debt ratio data was released, the upward trend in household debt goes back for the 26 years for which it has records and is showing no signs of slowing down.
With Trump's border tax adjustment looking increasingly likely, the stock market - as JPM has warned in recent days - is starting to fade the relentless Trumponomic, hope-driven rally since election day instead focusing on the details inside the president-elect's proposed plans. And, as explained earlier in the week, if the border tax proposal is implemented, economists at Deutsche Bank estimate the tax could send inflation far above the Federal Reserve's 2% target and drive a 15% surge in the dollar.