On Friday, residential real estate brokerage firm Redfin released new data on home prices, showing that prices fell 0.6 percent in February, year over year. According to Redfin’s numbers, this was the first time that home prices actually fell since 2012.
No Federal Reserve officials thought it’d be appropriate to begin cutting rates in 2023, and officials worried easing financial conditions could complicate the central bank’s efforts to bring down inflation, according to internal discussions at the Fed’s policy meeting three weeks ago.
A normally dry research report jolted the gold market this week, when it pointed to massive but so far unidentified sovereign buyers. Central banks bought 399 tons of bullion in the third quarter, almost double the previous record, according to the World Gold Council. Just under a quarter went to publicly identified institutions, stoking speculation about mystery buyers.
Central banks globally have been accumulating gold reserves at a furious pace last seen 55 years ago when the U.S. dollar was still backed by gold. According to the World Gold Council (WGC) central banks bought a record 399 tonnes of gold worth around $20 billion in the third quarter of 2022, with global demand for the precious metal back to pre-pandemic levels.
The Bank of England on Tuesday announced an expansion of its emergency bond-buying operation as it looks to restore order to the country’s chaotic bond market. The central bank said it will widen its purchases of U.K. government bonds — known as gilts — to include index-linked gilts from Oct. 11 until Oct. 14. Index-linked gilts are bonds where payouts to bondholders are benchmarked in line with the U.K. retail price index.
In a market environment where the only hope left is a central bank pivot away from rate hikes and back to QE, any slight detour by any central bank in the west is now put under a microscope with excitement as if stocks are about to be saved. The Bank of England’s minimal intervention in long term gilt purchases to stave off a collapse in the UK pension system recently had investors buzzing with dreams that this was the beginning of a pivot by other central banks back to stimulus. This is not the case.
Through the first 24 months of the pandemic, U.S. home prices soared 38.5%. In some markets, like Phoenix and Dallas, home prices grew by more than 50%.
Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said longer-run structural issues will continue to put upward pressure on home prices and rents even as the central bank begins a campaign to raise borrowing costs.
While American media is focused on the chances of a Thanksgiving weekend terrorist attack (not to make light of those concerns)…a group of international bureaucrats will be meeting to decide if the world will take a step closer to a Chinese yuan reserve currency. On Monday November 30th, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) votes on whether the yuan (the currency …
What Does a Chinese Yuan Reserve Currency Mean for Real Estate Investors? Read More »