The Bank of Canada likely only has two more solo rate hikes before it will have to wait for the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, says National Bank Financial.
In a research note published Monday, NBF notes that the Bank of Canada has just raised its key rate a third time while the central banks of most of the other advanced countries look on from the sidelines.
“Given the magnitude of the shock suffered south of the border, disinflationary pressures there have been much greater than in Canada, which suggests that the Fed could sit tight for another year,” it says.
The Fed is scheduled to release its latest decision on interest rates Tuesday afternoon.
In Canada, the rate is still certainly very stimulative, NBF says, however, it believes that the Bank of Canada “is unlikely to keep going it alone for much longer.”
“Indeed, overly divergent monetary policies between Canada and the United States could drive the loonie upward and further deteriorate a trade balance already in bad shape,” NBF says. As a result, it predicts that the Bank of Canada will only deliver two more 25 basis point rate hikes over the next year.
“With the economy slowing down to the level of potential GDP growth for 2011 and with the output gap closed, the Bank of Canada should then mark time before raising rates further until the U.S. economy gets up and running again,” NBF says.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Singapore - SkyPark at Marina Bay Sands
You love it for its casinos, its beaches and, most of all, its Slings. But you’re about to get another immensely compelling reason.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to go to that great swimming pool in the sky...
Introducing the SkyPark at Marina Bay Sands, home to a jaw-dropping rooftop pool 57 stories above Singapore, open now.
It’s a massive, watery park the size of a soccer field spread out across the tops of three skyscrapers—like a rooftop aircraft carrier entirely devoted to swimming. Gather your sun-baked Singapore cohorts, find your way to the daybeds on the private end of the SkyPark, and you’ll see it: an infinity pool floating far above downtown.
If you feel like a closer look, ditch the snow-white daybed for a snow-white pool float, or take an exploratory backstroke down the length of the pool—nearly 500 feet stretching along the edge of it all. (You’ve always lived life on the edge.)
If you fancy a dip in this pool, you'll need a head for heights - it's 55 storeys up.
But swimming to the edge won't be quite as risky as it looks. While the water in the infinity pool seems to end in a sheer drop, it actually spills into a catchment area where it is pumped back into the main pool. At three times the length of an Olympic pool and 650ft up, it is the largest outdoor pool in the world at that height.
It features in the impressive, boat-shaped 'SkyPark' perched atop the three towers that make up the world's most expensive hotel, the £4billion Marina Bay Sands development in Singapore.
I’d stay away from the observation deck in the name of tourist dodging, but when you’re ready for dry land, you’ll have a whole Vegas-style resort/casino waiting beneath you. That means a casino floor, two theaters and no fewer than 16 restaurants that don’t require changing out of your bathing suit.
The hotel, which has 2,560 rooms costing from £350 a night, was officially opened yesterday with a concert by Diana Ross.
The Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, estimated to have cost £2billion when it opened in 2004, was previously the world's most expensive hotel.
But with its indoor canal, opulent art, casino, outdoor plaza, convention centre, theatre, crystal pavilion and museum shaped like a lotus flower, the Marina Bay Sands has taken its crown.
The infinity pool on the roof is in the 'SkyPark' which spans the three towers of the hotel. The platform itself is longer than the Eiffel tower laid down and is one of the largest of its kind in the world.
Infinity pools give the effect that the water extends to the horizon. In reality, the water spills over the edge into a catchment below, and is then pumped back into the pool. The pools have two circulation systems. The first functions like that of a regular pool, filtering and heating the water in the main pool. The second filters the water in the catch basin and returns it to the upper pool.
The Marina Sands resort was designed by architect Moshe Safdie who based it on a deck of cards.
Inside shoppers can ride along an indoor canal in Sampan boats styled on traditional Chinese vessels from the 17th century.
The owners have also commissioned five well-known artists to create works of art to 'integrate' with the buildings. Among these is a 40m-long Antony Gormley sculpture made from 16,100 steel rods. The whole thing weighs 14.8 tons and it took 60 people to assemble it in the hotel.
Artist Chongbin Zheng created Rising Forest which is 83 three metre high pots with trees in them. The pots were so big the artist had to build a customised kiln the size of a small building to make them in.
The world's most expensive hotel was given a launch party befitting it. Singing legend Diana Ross performed for 2,500 VIPs in the resort's Grand Ballroom and pop singer Kelly Rowland headlined an outdoor concert.
The opening celebrations also featured a death-defying relay. Seven teams of three participants each scaled the three towers before sprinting across the 340-metre long Sands SkyPark, where the infinity pool is located, to the finish line.
The resort will employ 10,000 people directly and generate up to £48m each year. Entrance to the casino alone is nearly £50 a day - but an average of 25,000 people have visited the casino daily since its initial phased opening two months ago.
Thomas Arasi, president and chief executive officer of the resort, said he expects to attract an astonishing 70,000 visitors a day once it is fully open.
It was due to open in 2009, but was delayed thanks to labour and material shortages, and funding problems due to the global financial crisis.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to go to that great swimming pool in the sky...
Introducing the SkyPark at Marina Bay Sands, home to a jaw-dropping rooftop pool 57 stories above Singapore, open now.
It’s a massive, watery park the size of a soccer field spread out across the tops of three skyscrapers—like a rooftop aircraft carrier entirely devoted to swimming. Gather your sun-baked Singapore cohorts, find your way to the daybeds on the private end of the SkyPark, and you’ll see it: an infinity pool floating far above downtown.
If you feel like a closer look, ditch the snow-white daybed for a snow-white pool float, or take an exploratory backstroke down the length of the pool—nearly 500 feet stretching along the edge of it all. (You’ve always lived life on the edge.)
If you fancy a dip in this pool, you'll need a head for heights - it's 55 storeys up.
But swimming to the edge won't be quite as risky as it looks. While the water in the infinity pool seems to end in a sheer drop, it actually spills into a catchment area where it is pumped back into the main pool. At three times the length of an Olympic pool and 650ft up, it is the largest outdoor pool in the world at that height.
It features in the impressive, boat-shaped 'SkyPark' perched atop the three towers that make up the world's most expensive hotel, the £4billion Marina Bay Sands development in Singapore.
I’d stay away from the observation deck in the name of tourist dodging, but when you’re ready for dry land, you’ll have a whole Vegas-style resort/casino waiting beneath you. That means a casino floor, two theaters and no fewer than 16 restaurants that don’t require changing out of your bathing suit.
The hotel, which has 2,560 rooms costing from £350 a night, was officially opened yesterday with a concert by Diana Ross.
The Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, estimated to have cost £2billion when it opened in 2004, was previously the world's most expensive hotel.
But with its indoor canal, opulent art, casino, outdoor plaza, convention centre, theatre, crystal pavilion and museum shaped like a lotus flower, the Marina Bay Sands has taken its crown.
The infinity pool on the roof is in the 'SkyPark' which spans the three towers of the hotel. The platform itself is longer than the Eiffel tower laid down and is one of the largest of its kind in the world.
Infinity pools give the effect that the water extends to the horizon. In reality, the water spills over the edge into a catchment below, and is then pumped back into the pool. The pools have two circulation systems. The first functions like that of a regular pool, filtering and heating the water in the main pool. The second filters the water in the catch basin and returns it to the upper pool.
The Marina Sands resort was designed by architect Moshe Safdie who based it on a deck of cards.
Inside shoppers can ride along an indoor canal in Sampan boats styled on traditional Chinese vessels from the 17th century.
The owners have also commissioned five well-known artists to create works of art to 'integrate' with the buildings. Among these is a 40m-long Antony Gormley sculpture made from 16,100 steel rods. The whole thing weighs 14.8 tons and it took 60 people to assemble it in the hotel.
Artist Chongbin Zheng created Rising Forest which is 83 three metre high pots with trees in them. The pots were so big the artist had to build a customised kiln the size of a small building to make them in.
The world's most expensive hotel was given a launch party befitting it. Singing legend Diana Ross performed for 2,500 VIPs in the resort's Grand Ballroom and pop singer Kelly Rowland headlined an outdoor concert.
The opening celebrations also featured a death-defying relay. Seven teams of three participants each scaled the three towers before sprinting across the 340-metre long Sands SkyPark, where the infinity pool is located, to the finish line.
The resort will employ 10,000 people directly and generate up to £48m each year. Entrance to the casino alone is nearly £50 a day - but an average of 25,000 people have visited the casino daily since its initial phased opening two months ago.
Thomas Arasi, president and chief executive officer of the resort, said he expects to attract an astonishing 70,000 visitors a day once it is fully open.
It was due to open in 2009, but was delayed thanks to labour and material shortages, and funding problems due to the global financial crisis.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Central bank raises interest rate and could continue to raise rates this year
The Bank of Canada hiked rates another 25 basis points on Wednesday morning, and left some economists with the impression that it may yet continue to hike.
In the policy statement accompanying Wednesday’s rate decision, the bank indicated that further rate hikes will be “carefully considered in light of the unusual uncertainty surrounding the outlook.” That outlook has dimmed somewhat of late, leading some economists to expect that the central bank will be pausing its hikes. Indeed, while Wednesday’s rate rise was widely expected, it wasn’t viewed as a slam dunk.
Ahead of Wednesday’s announcement, a common view was that the bank would suggest that the rate hikes may cease while the recovery falters. But the bank didn’t seem to tack very far in that direction.
HSBC Securities (Canada) Inc. says that the statement’s tone “is considerably firmer than may have been anticipated”, and that it “to some extent challenges the market view” that Wednesday’s meeting would mark the a pause in the rate hiking cycle. HSBC is one of the few market observers that is expecting the bank to continue its rate hikes this year.
TD Economics says that it is “evident from the communiqué that the bank is in highly reactive mode. In the absence of clarity surrounding the outlook, there is no commitment or hint to either a pause in the tightening cycle or the continued gradual nudging of interest rate higher. Key economic and financial indicators over the next six weeks will ultimately decide the next decision on October 20.”
Economists at RBC Capital Markets say that “lingering worries about the U.S. economic outlook will likely be a contributing factor to the Bank of Canada stepping to the sidelines.” While domestic conditions remain very expansionary, the weaker external environment will hamper Canada’s recovery, it suggests. “Against this backdrop, we expect the bank to hold the policy rate at 1% to assess the effect of the 75 bps of tightening undertaken to date on the domestic economy,” it says. However, it also suggests that the pause will be a brief one.
TD says that the odds favour the Bank of Canada pausing for some time. It currently does not anticipate another tightening before March of next year. TD says that the bank’s view on the economy in the July Monetary Policy Report is far too rosy, and the fact that in today’s statement it suggests that its view has dimmed, but only slightly, “raises the possibility that the bank remains too optimistic.”
In the opinion of TD Economics, the Canadian economy will be hard pressed to expand by 2% next year, it says, noting that it faces both external and domestic headwinds. While the bank anticipated in July that the economy will be back to full capacity by the end of 2011, TD Economics anticipates that it will take at least two quarters longer to reach that goal.
“The implication is that soft economic numbers are anticipated in the coming months. Indeed, we expect that the unemployment rate could edge higher in the near term and core inflation is expected to dip towards 1.4% in early 2011. This outlook suggests that a pause in the tightening cycle could easily occur,” TD concludes.
However, BMO Capital Markets observes that the Bank of Canada clearly retains its tightening bias, and it observes that it “seems generally unfazed by the recent cooling in the Canadian economy.”
“While we had been expecting the Bank to now move to the sidelines for a spell, it appears that it will take a deeper slowdown in domestic spending (as we suspect) than what we have seen so far to prompt them to stop raising rates,” it concludes.
National Bank Financial agrees that the overall tone of the report does not suggest that the bank is getting ready to pause in its rate increases. It says its own assessment about the downside risks to global recovery in the second half of 2010 is gloomier than the Bank of Canada seems to hold.
“We feel that a tactical pause this month would have been easily justified given the loss of economic momentum already apparent in the U.S. and starting to show in the Euro-zone. Unless more clouds gather on the horizon over the coming weeks, our forecast calling for a 1.5% overnight rate with a Canadian dollar at par against the USD by Q1 2011 will occur faster than what we had envisaged,” it says.
In the policy statement accompanying Wednesday’s rate decision, the bank indicated that further rate hikes will be “carefully considered in light of the unusual uncertainty surrounding the outlook.” That outlook has dimmed somewhat of late, leading some economists to expect that the central bank will be pausing its hikes. Indeed, while Wednesday’s rate rise was widely expected, it wasn’t viewed as a slam dunk.
Ahead of Wednesday’s announcement, a common view was that the bank would suggest that the rate hikes may cease while the recovery falters. But the bank didn’t seem to tack very far in that direction.
HSBC Securities (Canada) Inc. says that the statement’s tone “is considerably firmer than may have been anticipated”, and that it “to some extent challenges the market view” that Wednesday’s meeting would mark the a pause in the rate hiking cycle. HSBC is one of the few market observers that is expecting the bank to continue its rate hikes this year.
TD Economics says that it is “evident from the communiqué that the bank is in highly reactive mode. In the absence of clarity surrounding the outlook, there is no commitment or hint to either a pause in the tightening cycle or the continued gradual nudging of interest rate higher. Key economic and financial indicators over the next six weeks will ultimately decide the next decision on October 20.”
Economists at RBC Capital Markets say that “lingering worries about the U.S. economic outlook will likely be a contributing factor to the Bank of Canada stepping to the sidelines.” While domestic conditions remain very expansionary, the weaker external environment will hamper Canada’s recovery, it suggests. “Against this backdrop, we expect the bank to hold the policy rate at 1% to assess the effect of the 75 bps of tightening undertaken to date on the domestic economy,” it says. However, it also suggests that the pause will be a brief one.
TD says that the odds favour the Bank of Canada pausing for some time. It currently does not anticipate another tightening before March of next year. TD says that the bank’s view on the economy in the July Monetary Policy Report is far too rosy, and the fact that in today’s statement it suggests that its view has dimmed, but only slightly, “raises the possibility that the bank remains too optimistic.”
In the opinion of TD Economics, the Canadian economy will be hard pressed to expand by 2% next year, it says, noting that it faces both external and domestic headwinds. While the bank anticipated in July that the economy will be back to full capacity by the end of 2011, TD Economics anticipates that it will take at least two quarters longer to reach that goal.
“The implication is that soft economic numbers are anticipated in the coming months. Indeed, we expect that the unemployment rate could edge higher in the near term and core inflation is expected to dip towards 1.4% in early 2011. This outlook suggests that a pause in the tightening cycle could easily occur,” TD concludes.
However, BMO Capital Markets observes that the Bank of Canada clearly retains its tightening bias, and it observes that it “seems generally unfazed by the recent cooling in the Canadian economy.”
“While we had been expecting the Bank to now move to the sidelines for a spell, it appears that it will take a deeper slowdown in domestic spending (as we suspect) than what we have seen so far to prompt them to stop raising rates,” it concludes.
National Bank Financial agrees that the overall tone of the report does not suggest that the bank is getting ready to pause in its rate increases. It says its own assessment about the downside risks to global recovery in the second half of 2010 is gloomier than the Bank of Canada seems to hold.
“We feel that a tactical pause this month would have been easily justified given the loss of economic momentum already apparent in the U.S. and starting to show in the Euro-zone. Unless more clouds gather on the horizon over the coming weeks, our forecast calling for a 1.5% overnight rate with a Canadian dollar at par against the USD by Q1 2011 will occur faster than what we had envisaged,” it says.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
August housing market quietens
The REALTORS® Association of Edmonton reports that the average price of single family property in the Edmonton area has softened with a small drop for the second consecutive month. Prices were plateaued at just over $388,000 from March to June. Condominium prices have dropped steadily from their high point of $253,000 in April and are down another 2.99%.
“Despite the two month drop, single family homes are still priced a bit higher than they were at the same time last year,” said Larry Westergard, president of the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton. “There may be bargains in the condominium market as prices are about $10,000 less than a year ago, on average.”
The average* priced single family property was down 1.96% and sold for $372,253 in August. Condominiums dropped in price for the fourth consecutive month and sold on average for $232,230 in August. The duplex/rowhouse average price was up 16.7% to $352,662 but based on just 56 sales so the average may be skewed by the selection of properties sold. The average residential sale price (which includes all types of residential property) was $325,588; down just 1.3% from last month.
Residential sales in August were down from the previous month at 1,195 as were listings at 2,700. This sales-to-listing ratio of 44% increased the available inventory to 8,822 units at the end of the month. Sales were slower as the average days-on-market was up six at 57 days.
“Although the market has quieted this summer the inventory is being constantly refreshed,” said Westergard. “Our 3,200 REALTORS® are listing 50 to 100 properties every day and wide choice is available in all areas. We don’t expect a big push this fall but homes are selling although the sales cycle is longer than many sellers would like.”
“Despite the two month drop, single family homes are still priced a bit higher than they were at the same time last year,” said Larry Westergard, president of the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton. “There may be bargains in the condominium market as prices are about $10,000 less than a year ago, on average.”
The average* priced single family property was down 1.96% and sold for $372,253 in August. Condominiums dropped in price for the fourth consecutive month and sold on average for $232,230 in August. The duplex/rowhouse average price was up 16.7% to $352,662 but based on just 56 sales so the average may be skewed by the selection of properties sold. The average residential sale price (which includes all types of residential property) was $325,588; down just 1.3% from last month.
Residential sales in August were down from the previous month at 1,195 as were listings at 2,700. This sales-to-listing ratio of 44% increased the available inventory to 8,822 units at the end of the month. Sales were slower as the average days-on-market was up six at 57 days.
“Although the market has quieted this summer the inventory is being constantly refreshed,” said Westergard. “Our 3,200 REALTORS® are listing 50 to 100 properties every day and wide choice is available in all areas. We don’t expect a big push this fall but homes are selling although the sales cycle is longer than many sellers would like.”
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