Doug Porter Quotes (84 Quotes)

The bottom line is that as long as equities remain aloft, there is precious little outside of Fed tightening to cool growth, ... And that tightening may need to be much more aggressive than the market currently expects to bring (economic) growth closer to the Fed's comfort zone of around 3.5 percent.

If there's anything to point out from the press release from the Fed, I would have to say on balance it was a little bit milder than expected.

Canada's dollar still has a lot of supporters out there. The economy is performing very well and the central bank may go further.

(On Wednesday) it was oil and gas and on Thursday it's paper and forest products and gold, which is a name you don't hear too often on the winning side.

I think you can definitely make a case that this is as much a U. S. dollar strength story as a euro weakness story, ... We also think the U. S. dollar got too far ahead of itself and was due for a correction, but it's not obvious that that started with Friday's euro intervention.

What's quite encouraging about some of the strength we've seen in recent weeks, is that we're almost seeing a rotation form one sector to another. In other words, while industrial products and technology have been the clear winner this year, there have been a number of supporting actors.

I don't think the bank has set anything in stone, but it does sound like they've put a ceiling on the rate hikes.

After about a two-week lull we'll get back to business this week, ... We've had a few signs that the economy is losing some momentum and these reports will help indicate whether that's really the case.

This is a real story of a split market ... some of the tech stocks have been weak for most of the day, but generally most of the market has fared quite well.

Technology had been the big loser last week and part of this week as well. And part of that was because there was a little flutter of concern over the Fed, which I have to think was justifiable at the time. But a lot of those concerns have been put right back into bed.

What it shows is that inventories are still in pretty good balance. There's no sign that there's any unwanted build-up.

Canada's trade picture remains very healthy, at least on the surface, thanks to booming commodity prices. The more recent slide in natural gas prices suggests that this may mark the peak for the surplus in this cycle.

Even though the headline number looked good on the TSE, there is still a slight concern that it's moving forward on vary narrow breadth.

On balance, this is a positive for the Canadian economy when those prices are strong.

The central bank is more upbeat about the economy. The market expects the bank to raise interest rates next month. But I think the risks are for the bank to do more than that.

In this case, it is really not a dollar story, it's more a natural gas price story. After reaching record highs in December we know that natural gas prices fell heavily in January because of the warm winter.

You had the oil and energy complex dropping on a day when energy prices have rebounded and look to be strengthening and it looks like oil prices are headed back above 29. And financials were weak even though the bond market was surprisingly quite strong both in Canada and the U.S.

It was a similar story to what we saw in 1999 when it was dominated by a vary narrow group of stocks, Bell and Nortel, but outside of that there was quite a bit of weakness,

The unemployment report will be a big one, ... An indication that job growth is still going gangbusters is going to make the market even more weary of a rate hike.

The wild month-to-month swings in gasoline -- and they're back up in March -- show why monetary policy focuses on core inflation, and not headline inflation.

This government is trying to offer as much tax relief as possible. We can thank the commodity boom for that.

What's interesting is that there's a real split between present expectations and the future. Consumers still view their present situation as exceptionally good, but there does seem to be a little bit of trepidation about the outlook going forward.

There was a strong hint in their latest minutes that they're talking about half percentage point moves in interest rates rather than just these baby steps of a quarter percentage point move.

The overwhelming view is that the bank will continue to raise interest rates, despite the latest strength in the Canadian dollar.

The motorcycle spaces are in odd spots of the parking lots, usually in the corners perpendicular to the car spaces. This is the perfect spot for them. People would just as soon not park in a car space because their motorcycle might get hit by a car, they would prefer their own spot.

I think there are more pieces of good news here than bad news.

That he says 'the downside risks predominate,' however, suggests we can expect further interest-rate cuts over the course of the spring. I would expect a 50 basis point (half-percentage point) cut at the next meeting.

These together will probably increase consumer spending and at the margin . . . it will put a bit of upward pressure on growth and could potentially put that much more pressure on the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates.

So when all is said and done, there was a lot more said than done on the inflation front.

We're a clear-cut loser from the spike we're seeing in energy prices.

Right now there's concern again reemerging in the market that the Fed (U.S. Federal Reserve) is going to become more aggressive,

In this environment, the Bank of Canada has very little room for error, and cannot be overly focused on a single sector of the economy, no matter how weak.

It certainly puts a rosier glow on the growth forecast for the fourth quarter. I was getting ready to revise that one down, because there had been some many weak reports for November. This report saves the day.

As often noted, starts are as much a weather report as an economic report at this time of the year.

I think you can make a case that it was led by a turnaround by the technology sector in the U.S.,

Part of the story here is the growing view among nonresident investors of the bargains to be had in Canada. There are any number of U.S. or foreign publications that are highlighting the Canadian market and how well it's performing, and to some extent it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,

At the very least, it drums on the point that they'll continue to raise interest rates. By deductive reasoning, you'd assume that they don't have a big problem with the strength of the currency.

The continued moderation in inflation has pushed down yields. The Bank of Canada doesn't sound overly concerned about inflation.

No real common thread on the equity story. I guess one area of strength was in the financial sector. Partly, that was due to the rebound in bond prices.

There's been a slight upward revision of expectations for Fed tightening, which would keep the spread between rates locked in. The earlier view was that the spread might narrow.

As the negatives keep stacking up for the province, we will see growth weaken ... and begin to dig into the province's revenues.

This is a clear-cut negative for Canadian growth.

March's report didn't meet the markets' worst fears, and on those grounds I view it as somewhat bullish, ... I don't really see any discernable sign that job growth is slowing. The underlying trend is still extremely robust job growth, which will lead the Fed to raise rates again.

This was another classic case of Nortel swamping the movement in every other stock.

I think the overall picture is going to be one of extreme strength and the pool of labor is not getting any bigger, ... The Fed's concern is that wage increases will start outstripping productivity gains. So far that hasn't been a problem but that's what people are looking for in this week's report.

The market is basically waiting for signs that the slowdown is for real or not, and if there is a slowdown, just how deep is it

The fact that the dollar was even raised in the statement, I think at the very least, suggests the bank is keeping a close eye on it.

We have a few economic numbers coming up that will probably shed some more light on just how strong the U.S. economy is, ... The perception is that nothing is slowing the economy down yet, especially with the markets going the way they are.

The main message for me in the (U.S.) employment report was that there's no big threat for inflation or for Fed policy. Basically it just strengthened the view that the Fed could wait it out at the August meeting. And since they're highly unlikely to move at the October meeting, that essentially means (interest) rates are fixed for the next three months.

And I think a lot of it flows from a combination of very positive Canadian economic data on Thursday, as well as more signs out of the U.S. that the U.S. economy is cooling to a sustainable pace and that the (Federal Reserve) will be on hold for some time.