Today the S&P 500 was down 0.4% and Toronto was down 0.5%.
Almost all of our stock picks were down as well. Constellation Software was an exception and was up 4.2%. Toll Brothers was down 3.0%.
Canadian Tire is expected to release earnings before the open tomorrow. It’s my biggest holding and I am cautiously optimistic that it had a good quarter. It was a late Spring and so possibly the quarter will not be so good. We shall soon see. I expect the credit card division will have done well.
I was just taking a look to see if Canadian Western Bank’s insurance customers at Canadian Direct are mostly in Ontario rather than western Canada. I could not see a breakdown (there may be but I did not find it). I did read however that they have reinsurance and catastrophic losses. So maybe they won’t be hurt much by the Alberta floods or Ontario floods. It’s really just not obvious to me if they will hurt much or not. The fact they have not announced any losses would seem to suggest that perhaps it was not a big deal for them. (In which case I sold my shares too hastily). On the other hand perhaps they have no obligation to report any losses until they report earnings which is probably early September. If they do have a lot of customers that were flooded by they have reinsurance then the fight will be on to see if the reinsurance is going to cover them. Overland flooding could be excluded. Alberta insurance companies are being pressured to “honor” claims for sewer backup even when technically a sewer backup associated with overland flooding was excluded from the policy. Things could get interesting. There could also be a fair amount of vehicle damage due to flooding, and that typically is covered as I understand it.