Markets were moderately down today. Notably (especially to me, since it is my largest position) Canadian Tire was down 1.8%. But I consider that to be basically just normal volatility on a negative day.
U.S. GDP was down 0.1%. I don’t know how that is measured. But I feel safe in saying that the accuracy of measuring the output of the entire U.S. economy is not likely more accurate than a half percent or so. So I don’t put a lot of faith in numbers showing quarterly growth to the nearest tenth a percentage point. In addition there were apparently temporary factors including Super Storm sandy at work. I understand military spending was down quite a bit. That may have been more a case of deferring expenses rather than real cutbacks. But, who knows? it is certainly possible that the U.s. will cut back quite substantially on military spending. But overall I think the slow but steady growth pattern in the U.S. is well established.
We continue to be in the middle of the Q4 earnings release season with many reports yet to come in, especially for Canadian companies.