The 10-Minute Take

Good news, the rate of growth of new COVID-19 cases in Europe appears to be slowing. Bad news, the economic cost is just beginning to hit home. With a deep and broad recession underway, the eurozone is again divided over how to stabilize the economy and pay for its recovery. Ideas for joint action, from procurement of protective equipment to unemployment benefits, are coming by the day. But there’...

The past week saw four big up days for equities, and that tells Lori Calvasina that we haven’t seen enough capitulation to signal a new bull run. She believes more lows may lie ahead. As Head of U.S. Equity Strategy at RBC Capital Markets, Calvasina has been listening to big investors and studying market sentiment – and she’s detecting too much calm given the economic storm. On our latest podcast,...

Canada struck back with a two-fisted punch to send monetary and fiscal confidence to the economy. The Bank of Canada not only cut rates; it embraced quantitative easing, to buy bonds and other financial assets from governments that will be borrowing a lot more money. For its part, the federal government came out with Phase 2 of its stimulus package, to help small- and medium-sized businesses stay...

While stocks have been surging, the US dollar has been on a week-long slide. The correction comes after an extraordinary run-up in the dollar in early March, when investors fled to the greenback’s higher ground and corporates followed, to ensure they were dollar-funded heading into an economic crisis. The prospects now of massive fiscal stimulus and concerted central bank intervention have investo...

Donald Trump is using every diplomatic tool to stop the oil war unleashed by Russia and Saudi Arabia, betting that neither can sustain themselves for long at $25 a barrel. But the Russians may be betting that Trump – or at least U.S. oil producers – will blink first, by scaling back American production and allowing OPEC+ to again drive global markets. Even if the oil powers agree to stabilize mark...

Washington seems to finally have bipartisan agreement for a $2-trillion stimulus package. Tom Porcelli, RBC Capital Markets Chief U.S. Economist, says it’s enough to “backfill” the U.S. economy until mid-May. How will the world’s economic engine fare after that? That depends on the success of social distancing. But Porcelli thinks the creatively-driven U.S. economy – from media streaming to food s...

After one month of declines, 10,000 points off the Dow and a lot of “announcement indigestion,” RBC’s Chief Economist Craig Wright says markets are still searching for a bottom. They’re unsure of how to price so much new risk, all at once. Central banks are also struggling to assert themselves, while governments have not been able to get enough new money into the economy. Even when the trillion-do...