CANADIAN HOME PRICES STILL BUBBLING

The Teranet-National Bank National Composite House Price Index (a mouthful!) was released yesterday.  This relatively new house price index is similar to the U.S. Case- Shiller index.   In short, January saw another increase in house prices, rising by 0.5% MoM, taking the year-over-year to 7.5% (the highest on record, which goes back to 2000.

Not surprisingly Toronto (+0.9% MoM) and Vancouver (+0.7% MoM) led the gains while Calgary posted a 0.5% drop.  The index has gone up nine months in a row on a monthly basis but January’s 0.5% increase was the smallest — although relative to the U.S. Case-Shiller 0.3% result, it is still quite bubbly.

…..read the Whole Market Musings & Data Deciphering HERE

In This Issue:

• While you were sleeping — global equity markets are responding positively to a slate of very robust manufacturing diffusion indices for March

• Some first quarter earnings thoughts — the consensus is currently expecting 37% YoY earnings growth for Q1, with revenues up 10%

• Income is king — while equity markets have been a strong performer in the past year, risk-adjusted returns still belong to the fixed-income market

• Size matters — once the arithmetic boost from lesser inventory withdrawal is adjusted from the real GDP data, it shows that the economy only managed to rebound at a tepid 1.6% annual rate since the recession technically ended

• Lies, damned lies and statistics — the media was just fawning over the Case-Shiller home price numbers … give me a giant break

• Confidence or lack thereof

• Show me the money!

• Chicago! Chicago PMI at a three-month low of 58.8 in March

• Canadian spring — more signs of a spring thaw in Canada with January’s GDP coming in above expected, rising 0.6%

• Canadian home prices still bubbling

…..read the Whole Market Musings & Data Deciphering HERE