Business Brief: The last cut of the deep cuts

Good morning, this is investment reporter Tim Shufelt. The Bank of Canada just delivered what Bay Street expects to be the, which has brought the country’s key interest rate down by nearly 2 full percentage points over the last six months. We’ll look at what the move means for the housing market and mortgage rates, the loonie and cross-border spending, and for the domestic stock market.

But the last few years have made central bank watchers of us all. Ever since inflation spun out of control, forcing policymakers to crank up interest rates to 20-year highs, we can’t seem toover the last six months, culminating in a pair of consecutive 0.5 per cent cuts that reduced the Bank of Canada’s overnight lending rate from 5 per cent to 3.25 per cent.

Many existing mortgagees facing renewal will also be happy to see rates coming down. They borrowed for as low as 1.4 per cent on a five-year fixed term in 2021, before watching with anxiety as those same rates soared to as high as 5.5 per cent over the following year and a half. This had the potential to wreak havoc on household finances across the country.

A weak loonie is bad news for import prices as well, especially in two ways likely to raise the ire of the Canadian consumer – groceries and gasoline., personal economics reporter Erica Alini writes. “Expect businesses to pass on the extra cost of a terrible exchange rate to grocery shoppers.” The same goes for gasoline, most of which is sourced from U.S. refineries.The Toronto Stock Exchange does not handle high interest rates very well. That’s due, in part, to how it’s built.

Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.12 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.18 per cent, Germany’s DAX gained 0.04 per cent and France’s CAC 40 slipped 0.03 per cent.

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