The Daily Chase: Final BoC decision day of 2021; Pfizer study helps ease Omicron fears
BNN Bloomberg
It's Bank of Canada decision day and the storyline today is simple: what will the central bank have to say about the timing for raising rates as inflation sits at the highest level in almost 19 years and after jobs growth in November quadrupled expectations?
It's Bank of Canada decision day and the storyline today is simple: what will the central bank have to say about the timing for raising rates as inflation sits at the highest level in almost 19 years and after jobs growth in November quadrupled expectations? Last time we heard from the Bank of Canada in October, it indicated liftoff could happen as early as April. We’ll set the scene with National Bank Chief Rates Strategist Warren Lovely at 8:30 a.m. (as part of our INFLATION NATION special coverage), and look forward to analysis from the likes of TD Deputy Chief Economist Derek Burleton at 10 a.m., BMO Head of Fixed Income Earl Davis at 1 p.m., Manulife Investment Management Head of Macro Strategy Frances Donald at 1:30 p.m., and we’ll round things out with a discussion about the implications for real estate with Realtor Nasma Ali at 4:20 p.m.
STOCKS TAKE A BREATHER
Major European markets and U.S. futures aren’t doing much of anything this morning after two big days of gains as Omicron fears faded. Notably on that front, Pfizer shares initially came under pressure in pre-market trading (as did BioNTech shares in Europe) after the Africa Health Research Institute released an early study showing their COVID vaccine is less effective against Omicron than other virus variants. However, the losses were pared after the two companies released an update touting the effectiveness of their vaccine at neutralizing Omicron when a third dose is administered.
AWS OUTAGE POST-MORTEM
The problem first landed on our radar yesterday when our news director noticed websites alerting users to a “widespread” problem. Then we saw a spike in AWS’s chart on downdetector.ca. By the late morning, AWS notified users that “an impairment of several network devices” was to blame for service disruptions in its US-EAST-1 region. It wasn’t until 7:35 p.m. ET that AWS said the problem was resolved. Between it all, we were reminded of our reliance on the cloud as everything from Amazon deliveries to Christmas lights were affected. We’ll lean on our Bloomberg News partners for the latest on what went wrong, why, and contingencies to shield the Internet of Things from mishaps like that.
RAIL DEAL GOES TO VOTES
