Tag Archives: stocks

Open Topic

Friday Free-for-all! September 23, 2016

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224 Comments

It’s the end of another work week and that means it’s time for another Friday Free-for-all!

This is our regular end of the week news round up and open topic discussion thread. Here are a few recent links to kick off the chat:

–Mother of all stock market corrections
–Alternative lending on the rise
–OECD slashes Canadian outlook
–Poloz signals delay in rate increase
–Empty home tax
–Variable rates will soar
–Sold as percentage of inventory data
–Canadians buying ‘too much car’
–

So what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent weekend!

economy, rates

Let’s get negative (interest rates)

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32 Comments

As the economy deteriorates further Canadians are sitting on a pile of cash. Stock portfolios are holding a record $75 billion in cash.

How do you get people spending and investing again?

Well, you could try negative interest rates.

That kinda worked in the EU. Denmark has driven down their currency which has helped exports. Of course the flip side of negative rates is the risk of housing and stock bubbles.

But how would negative rates most likely affect Canadian consumers?   Higher fees.

“What you might see happening is a negative interest rate masquerading as higher fees,” Milevsky said. “No bank in their right mind would tell a consumer, give us your hundred dollars and we’ll give you 95. That will never happen.”

Read the full article here.

Canada, economy

Canadian Stocks and Oil Slides Further

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99 Comments

On the plus side, gas prices are cheaper.

On the negative the side the Canadian economy is getting whacked by the slide in oil prices.

It’s been nine straight days of losses in the S&P/TSX, which is down 7.4% in that time.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley projected Brent oil may slump to as low as $20 a barrel on strength in the dollar. Brent dropped 6.7 percent to $31.32 a barrel in London. Bank of America Corp. cut its average 2016 Brent forecast to $46 a barrel from $50.

“Risk appetite will not return until we start to see crude carve out a bottom,” said David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc., in a note to clients.

The S&P/TSX fell 1 percent to 12,319.25 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The gauge capped a 20 percent plunge from its September 2014 record on Jan. 7, hitting a magnitude in declines commonly defined as a bear market. Canada was the second Group of 7 country to see its benchmark enter a bear market, after Germany’s DAX Index did in August.

Are you selling, buying or staying put?

Read the full article here.

Open Topic

Friday Free-for-all! The Late Edition.

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23 Comments

It’s the weekend again, but not just any weekend, this is the relaxing weekend in the midst of holiday and vacation land.

But it is Friday, and that traditionally means it’s Friday Free-for-all time here at VCI.

This is our open topic discussion thread for the weekend, here are a few recent links to kick off the chat:

–RBC: healthy 15% drop
–Soft landing is?
–Oil nosedives, what about stocks?
–Zinc, Wood, is all good
–An order of Canada for Carney
–Some debt numbers
–

So what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent holiday!

Canada, economy, Open Topic, opinion, predictions

Hold cash or leverage up?

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44 Comments

This article in the Globe and Mail asks ‘where is the smart money going‘?

Is a drop in oil prices good for the Canadian economy? Will interest rates stay low forever? Nobody knows, but that doesn’t keep us from asking.

Today’s situation amounts to a near total inversion of the markets of a generation ago. “If you look back to, say, 1981, stocks, bonds and real estate were all cheap,” says Jim Giles, chief investment officer at Foresters, a Toronto-based financial services provider with more than $20-billion in assets under management. “Now, the exact opposite is true.”

For investors, this poses a daunting challenge: What do you buy when there’s nothing left to buy – or at least nothing that appears to be a bargain?

For somepeople cash is trash, for others it’s king:

Tim McElvaine, one of Canada’s best-known value investors, has a similar viewpoint. The head of McElvaine Investment Management Ltd. in Victoria is holding about 25 per cent of his fund’s assets in cash, considerably higher than the normal level, as he awaits buying opportunities.

“People will tell you they don’t want to hold cash because it doesn’t yield anything,” he said in an interview. “But the real value of cash is its ability to buy things when prices become attractive.”

Among the reasons to worry about today’s market is that near-zero interest rates have failed to spark any widespread global recovery. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development trimmed its global growth forecast this week to 3.3 per cent for this year, reflecting the euro zone’s continuing woes and a slowing Chinese economy.

Read the full article here.