Interest Rates Matter

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A tweet from @JohnPasalis last week caught my attention; it included a chart (left) of the number of home sales the week before Christmas plotted over the last 10 years. The end of year swarm of sales by the FOMO 2.0 crowd is a 10 year record (maybe longer) of over 40% more than the highest of previous years recorded. Wow.

I mashed up the chart with end of year data for average SF Detached Y/Y price increases and the Bank of Canada 10 year bond rate. It looks to me that as interest rates drop, the demand rises for physical assets. This can also been seen since the asset crash into March 2009 in my chart of SF Detached, Bitcoin and Gold. And if we look at the "Real" BoC Bank Rate chart which has been mostly negative since the 2009 crash, it becomes even more evident that the reach for yield comes at the expense of risk management.

Although the Bank of Canada rejects the policy use of negative nominal rates (chart left), real negative rates continue to animate the FOMO crowd and force the weaker hands into lower consumption and higher savings to repair balance sheets.

At the retail street level, the major banks all agree in their forecast statements (chart left) that 5 year fixed mortgage rates will remain well under 3% for at least the next two full years through 2022.

These projections may not unfold as suggested; a 2020 Bank of England Staff Working Paper "Eight centuries of global real interest rates, wealth returns and broader real growth, and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018" concludes in part:

"The data here suggests that the “historically implied” safe asset provider long-term real rate stands at 1.56% for the year 2018, which would imply that against the backdrop of inflation targets at 2%, nominal advanced economy rates may no longer rise sustainably above 3.5%. Whatever the precise dominant driver – simply extrapolating such long-term historical trends suggests that negative real rates will not just soon constitute a “new normal” – they will continue to fall constantly. By the late 2020s, global short term real rates will have reached permanently negative territory. By the second half of this century, global long-term real rates will have followed."

The Bank of Canada Real Long Rate approached negative 1% in 2018 and with the Covid 19 lock down it pressed below negative 1% in 2020.

CPI is currently 0.5% (NOV 2020 print) and has been rising since the March 2020 lock down; this inflationary pressure will keep real rates muted and the Bank of Canada expects "CPI inflation to arrive at 0.2% for 2020 and remain below 2% until 2023." (DEC 9, 2020 BoC update)
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The Brookings Institution provides current World Data Lab projections indicating that there are four projected patterns of recoveries.

​Canada is projected to "recover" from the coronavirus perhaps in 2023 or 2024, and that Consumer Spending in North America is down nearly 1% Y/Y and is projected to continue dropping (charts left).

Zero or positive growth in spending per capita. This group includes China, Egypt, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, and most countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Fast recovery in spending per capita: recovery by 2021-2022. These “fast recovers” represent a wide mix of countries, including India, most of Europe, and much of Southeast Asia.

Medium recovery in spending per capita: recovery by 2023-2024. This group includes large economies, such as the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, Brazil, and most of South America.

Slow recovery in spending per capita: recovery completed after 2025. This group includes Mexico, most of the Middle East, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

The drop in consumption affects employment (chart) especially in service related sectors which is where nearly 80% of Canadians earn their paycheques (Workforce Distribution chart left is from Statista.com). As noted on my Household Debt chart, "The widening spread between total household debt and household mortgages means we are borrowing even more to maintain lifestyle.​" But this trend requires positive cash flow which has been pinched for many Canadian households.