China’s mortgage rate cut for existing properties will hardly make any impact for Ivy Cai, as the Shanghai-based homeowner is facing the burden of a 15,000 yuan (US$2,131) monthly repayment. She is expected to save a few hundred yuan per month once the rate cut, announced on Tuesday as part of a bumper round of…
MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EPA-EFE / Shutterstock.com Why do the wealthiest Americans such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Beyonce and Jay-Z continue to take out mortgages for properties that they could easily purchase outright? Check Out: 20 Best Cities Where You Can Buy a House for Under $100K Find Out: How To Get Rich in Real Estate Starting…
An Australian one-hundred dollar banknote, top, and a New Zealand one-hundred dollar banknote are arranged for a photograph in Hong Kong, China, on Thursday, March 13, 2014. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images The Australian and New Zealand dollars scaled multi-month peaks on Wednesday while sterling hit its highest in more than two years against…
China has cut interest rates in a major move that will no doubt put pressure on the RBA. (Source: Getty) With great fanfare, the People’s Bank of China cut mortgage interest rates this week. Markets screamed with happiness, bidding up iron ore miners. There’s only one problem: the cuts are the equivalent of an ant…
Two Federal Reserve officials explained why they were in favor of reducing interest rates by a jumbo 50 basis points instead of a smaller first cut, citing progress on inflation and a cooling job market. Those twin developments “have emerged much more quickly than I imagined at the beginning of the summer,” Atlanta Fed president…
It could be time to rethink popular portfolio strategies for a lower interest rate environment. The Federal Reserve’s half-percent rate cut on Wednesday marked the first time in more than four years it moved to lower the benchmark interest rate. According to VanEck CEO Jan van Eck, investors should start thinking about how the changing…
This bull market is now nearly two years old, with no real indications that it is slowing down. In fact, it just got a significant boost from the Federal Reserve. The U.S. central bank last week lowered the federal funds rate by 50 basis points (0.5 percentage points), sparking a rally in the stock market:…
Hong Kong’s finance chief has vowed to intensify efforts to promote the city and diversify its sources of funding, as the business environment benefited from the lowered US interest rate and improvements in the local stock market. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po also said on Sunday that Hong Kong’s speed and the extent of its…
“We’re going to take it meeting by meeting,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday. The Federal Open Market Committee meets again in November. Getty Images The Federal Reserve’s decision this week to cut interest rates half a percentage point reverberated up and down the U.S. economy, with economists, business owners and investors wondering—what’s…
The Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates this week was a surprise to … well, nobody. The US central bank, like many of its peers, had telegraphed the decision for weeks as it made inroads containing inflation and now seeks to prevent a wider slowdown in the economy. Even for an institution marked by…