Today was surprisingly strong on the markets. The Dow was up 0.8%, the S&P 500 was up 1.0% and Toronto was up 0.4%
Many of our favorite stocks did well, Bank of America up 2.8%, Toll Brothers up 1.7%, Wells Fargo up 1.5%, Canadian Tire up another 0.5%. Stantec up 3.0%, Melcor up 1.4% (but Melcor has tiny volumes and so tends to move somewhat randomly).
20% of my Toll Brothers shares made a quiet exit from my account today. Automatically sold at $37 based on an order I had placed about two weeks ago to trim that position if the shares hit $37. I have mixed feelings on that but it did seem the prudent thing to so.
Greece had a debt upgrade today. Fitch raised it from CCC to B-. The rating is still very much in the high risk junk category. Nevertheless if is a welcome change in direction. Estimates of the U.S. deficit for this year fell sharply to $642 billion. That’s down from 1100 billion last year and down from a peak of 1400 billion. Slowly but surely the financial world is recovering and all those doomsday predictions are proving to be wrong. But worry the prophets of doom will continue to predict the end is nigh.