The TSX finished down 0.6% today. The Dow had been up but finished down 0.2% after the market began near the the end of the day to fear that the FED was going to stop buying bonds. (FED minutes revealed a worry about all this bond buying).
The markets never seem to focus on any one thing for long. So the euphoria over the fiscal cliff deal was unlikely to last too long and now we are moving on to the next worry or opportunity. None of this is predictable. Markets tend to move higher in the long term and are unpredictable in the short term.
Canadian Tire was down about 1.4% today. It’s always possible that my assessment of the value of Canadian Tire is too optimistic. Time will tell. But the fact that the share price declines is in no way convincing evidence that it is not a good investment. Some of the best opportunities in the markets (and perhaps some of the worse) will always be found among unloved stocks.
Dollarama was down 2.1% to $57.65. Possibly that had to do with poor results at a U.S. Dollar Store. It may be an opportunity to nibble at Dollarama.
My thoughts today again turned to selling. In particular I want to get rid of the margin I have been using in my margin account and may also end up withdrawing some money from the margin account for other purposes and so I may end up selling most or all of the stocks in my margin account. This will reduce my equity exposure and give me cash to be ready in case the market does dip. However, since I like the stocks I hold I will try to replace some of what I sell in the margin account by buying the same in the RRSP accounts.
I sold some Berkshire in the margin account today. Also I sold 500 shares of Stantec in the margin account. I still hold 1000 shares in other accounts. My gain on those 500 shares was 107% and so that made it easier to pull the trigger and also it has jumped quite a bit in the past six weeks.
I would like to update my personal portfolio breakdown but am having a technical problem even seeing my portfolio details in TD Waterhouse. I updated to Windows 8 because Microsoft had a special $40 deal on the Windows 8 update (for Windows 7 customers) until January 31 and now it seems some sites I visit are not yet compatible with Windows 8.
It may not have been wise to update to Windows 8 so soon. There was a promise that my machine would be faster. Yeah, not so much. Also my machine was trying to to add some newer Windows 8 updates tonight and then reported that it failed and was reverting and then it almost looked like it was not going to boot up at all and so overall I would caution people not to update to Windows 8 just yet. Possibly you could buy the update for the $40 but not install it yet.