This can affect Canadian mortgage rates even with an unchanged stance of Canadian monetary policy. Equity markets Time now to turn to stock markets. Recent action has some commentators questioning whether many economic forecasts, including ours, are too rosy. As I mentioned at the beginning, such a divergence between the economic outlook and market action needs to be taken seriously.
Part of the reconciliation must come from taking a longer-term perspective on equity market performance. True, the S&P 500 Index has fallen about 7 per cent from its highest level earlier this year. But even with that decline, the index is still about 35 per cent higher than it was three years ago. Several factors drove this performance over the past three years.