Interest rates unchanged in Canada, data weak in US, mixed in Europe

The Bank of Canada left interest rates unchanged yesterday. Reuters reports:

The Bank of Canada held its key lending rate unchanged at 4.25 percent on Tuesday and declined to hint at any rate rises ahead, even though it cautioned that inflation had sped higher than it had expected.

The Bank of Canada now sees inflation taking longer to return to the bank's 2 percent target, citing hikes in food and gasoline prices, and said the economy ran at just above its capacity in the first quarter of this year.

Yesterday also saw Statistics Canada report that Canada's composite leading indicator rose by 0.4 percent in March, driven by household spending and a robust labour market.

Things look a little less rosy a little to the south in the US. From Bloomberg:

Existing home sales slid 8.4 percent in March after rising 3.7 percent the previous month, the National Association of Realtors said today in Washington. A separate private report showed home-price declines in 20 major cities accelerated in February. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index fell to 104, from 108.2...

The supply of homes for sale decreased to 3.745 million last month. At the current sales rate, that represents a 7.3 months' supply, the highest since October. The median price of an existing home fell 0.3 percent last month from a year ago to $217,000.

Another industry report earlier today showed a measure of home values in 20 metropolitan areas, the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, declined 1 percent in February from a year earlier, the biggest price drop since the index started in 2001.

And meanwhile, manufacturing activity in the central Atlantic region continued to contract in April, according to the Richmond Fed’s latest survey.

The data from Europe were mixed. The National Bank of Belgium's business confidence indicator rose to 3.8 in April from 1.4 in March, but industrial new orders in the euro area fell 0.7 percent in February while in the UK, the Confederation of British Industry's manufacturing orders books balance fell to +2 in April from +8 in March. In Italy, retail sales rose 0.2 percent in February but consumer confidence fell in April after two consecutive months of rises.