The stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs report has investors rethinking the potential timing of U.S. Fed interest rate cuts. Hafiz Noordin, VP and Director, Active Fixed Income Portfolio Management, TD Asset Management joins MoneyTalk to discuss how the latest data impacts his outlook for rates and the fixed income sector. Transcript Greg Bonnell: We've got US jobs numbers coming in stronger than exp...
The stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs report has investors rethinking the potential timing of U.S. Fed interest rate cuts. Hafiz Noordin, VP and Director, Active Fixed Income Portfolio Management, TD Asset Management joins MoneyTalk to discuss how the latest data impacts his outlook for rates and the fixed income sector. Transcript Greg Bonnell: We've got US jobs numbers coming in stronger than expected. That has implications, of course, for interest rates and the bond market. Exactly what are those implications? Joining us now to discuss, Hafiz Noordin, VP and Director for Active Fixed Income Portfolio Management with TD Asset Management. Hafiz, great to have you back on the program. Hafiz Noordin: It's great to be back. Greg Bonnell: Job numbers were a little bit delayed. We got them, and they were stronger than we expected. We are seeing market reaction. Walk us through what we got. Hafiz Noordin: Yeah, I mean, if you're worried at all about the labor market cracking in the US-- and there was a bit of fear of that building over the last couple of weeks; we had weak job openings data-- today definitely dismissed some of those fears. You had 130,000 jobs created in the US in January. That was double the economists' consensus forecasts of 65,000. And what really was encouraging out of that was that the private-to-public mix was very strong as well. Private jobs were actually up 170,000, and there was a detraction in public and government jobs. So, generally a healthy economy in the US. You see the private sector leading job gains. And so we did see that. And then along with that, unemployment rate went from 4.4% to 4.3%, and wage growth was steady. So the average hourly earnings data that comes with this was steady at around 3.7% year over year. So all in all, pretty good, and I think shows that there has been some communication from the Trump administration. They were, even yesterday, signaling that let's not be too worried if it's a weak data print. But really, we ...
Shares of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) are trading at $668.69, essentially flat over the past week with a 0.04% decline, coinciding with a noticeable shift in retail investor sentiment on platforms like Reddit and X. Social sentiment has cooled to 44.7 for the week ending February 12, down from 57.5 over the prior month. The mixed ... Wall Street Sees 29% Upside for Meta While Retail Investors Tur...
Shares of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) are trading at $668.69, essentially flat over the past week with a 0.04% decline, coinciding with a noticeable shift in retail investor sentiment on platforms like Reddit and X. Social sentiment has cooled to 44.7 for the week ending February 12, down from 57.5 over the prior month. The mixed ... Wall Street Sees 29% Upside for Meta While Retail Investors Turn Skeptical
Prosecutors’ office says two museum workers, several tour guides and suspected mastermind among those detained French police investigating a suspected €10m (£8.7m) ticket fraud scheme at the Louvre museum in Paris have detained nine people, including two members of staff. “Based on the information available to the museum, we suspect the existence of a network organising large-scale fraud,” a museu...
Prosecutors’ office says two museum workers, several tour guides and suspected mastermind among those detained French police investigating a suspected €10m (£8.7m) ticket fraud scheme at the Louvre museum in Paris have detained nine people, including two members of staff. “Based on the information available to the museum, we suspect the existence of a network organising large-scale fraud,” a museum spokesperson told Agence France-Presse. Continue reading...
The European Central Bank will raise interest rates at least once this year, significantly boosting the euro against the dollar, according to Capital Group, the $3.3 trillion asset manager. The view runs contrary to many investors and economists who expect the ECB to remain on hold through 2027. Some even reckon it may ease policy should US rate cuts under a new Federal Reserve Chair force its han...
The European Central Bank will raise interest rates at least once this year, significantly boosting the euro against the dollar, according to Capital Group, the $3.3 trillion asset manager. The view runs contrary to many investors and economists who expect the ECB to remain on hold through 2027. Some even reckon it may ease policy should US rate cuts under a new Federal Reserve Chair force its hand. Money markets currently price a less than one-in-three chance of a quarter-point reduction. But Edward Harrold , investment director at Capital Group, expects a pickup in economic growth across Europe that will prompt the ECB to to diverge from the Fed. That should lift the euro to the “high-$1.20s area” by year-end, he said in an interview. It traded Friday at around $1.1860. “One of our more non-consensus views is that we could see tighter monetary policy in Europe sooner than the market has been pricing,” Harrold said, noting Germany’s plans to expand spending. “We expect to see European growth becoming more robust, more inflationary pressures coming through,” Harrold said. “We think this will bring the ECB to potentially begin hiking before the end of this year.” “We have a definite preference for the euro over the dollar,” he added. Harrold expects one or two rate hikes from the ECB’s current 2% level and sees the Fed easing policy broadly in line with market pricing, delivering two to three cuts in 2026. While some recent data has been softer than expected, there’s also a view that the Trump administration will want to run the economy hot before mid-term elections in November. “That will mean we get lower rates in the US but still kind of resilient inflation, so a lower real yield at the same time as we see real yields picking up in Europe,” Harrold said. “That will lead to a continuation of the positive euro/weaker dollar dynamic.” The euro area’s real policy rate is currently just under 0.5%, about half that of the US. The view on the euro hinges on a lot of “mov...