Traders immediately raised their bets that the Bank of Canada will soon cut interest rates as today’s inflation report was released.
Month-over-month, the consumer price index rose 0.6%, the largest increase since July 2023, but less than a forecast of 0.7% gain. Excluding gasoline, inflation slowed to 2.8% from 2.9% in February. The weaker-than-expected core readings immediately sparked heavy rounds of trading in bond and forex markets. The Canadian dollar fell about a quarter of a cent against the U.S. dollar to about 72.40 cents US. The Canada two-year bond yield fell about 10 basis points to 4.220%, although that’s nearly flat for the session. U.S. Treasuries, which set much of the direction for Canadian bonds, are having a quiet morning and are largely directionless so far.
In addition, inflationary pressures continued to narrow in March, with 15.5% of the components of CPI rising at more than 5%, compared to 21% in January, close to its historical average. Similarly, the share of components increasing by more than 3% eased to 37.5% from 41%, but still above historical norm. The decline in these measures suggests many CPI components decelerated in March and both measures are at their lowest since the summer of 2021, indicating a narrowing in inflationary pressures.
The broad easing in inflationary pressures in March will provide some relief for the BoC. However, as we have mentioned repeatedly, in our view, the BoC is unlikely to consider cutting rates until the momentum measure for the preferred core measure returns sustainably well below 3%, meaning that its preferred measures of core inflation are below 3% and that their momentum is around or below 2.5%. This is because inflation expectations and perceived inflation remain elevated.