sparked an immediately downturn in the Canadian dollar and has money markets maintaining their bets that another rate cut looms at the next Bank of Canada meeting Oct. 23 - but there’s considerable uncertainty as to how much.
Canada’s annual inflation rate reached the central bank’s target in August at it cooled to 2%, its lowest level since February 2021. The closely watched core price measures also cooled to their lowest level in 40 months while month-on-month consumer prices deflated by 0.2%. Analysts had forecast the consumer price index to cool to 2.1% from 2.5% in July on an annual basis, and expected it to be unchanged on a monthly basis.
Now that inflation is back to target, it’s time for the Bank of Canada to accelerate the pace of rate cuts. We expect central bankers to slash their policy rate by 50 basis points next month in an effort expedite the return to a more neutral setting. The market is still only placing a 50% probability on a non-standard reduction in October, but there’s no reason to wait for December after seeing these numbers.
Inflation continues to validate the need for the Bank of Canada to continue cutting its policy rate. We calculate that the current policy rate is still nearly 200 basis points above where it should be based on the current state of the economy. And that is after 75 bps in cuts over the last few months. No wonder odds of larger 50 basis point cuts are growing in futures markets. Over the next few weeks, we will be getting a number of BoC members speaking on the economy.
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