On Friday, the S&P 500 was up 0.2% and Toronto was up 0.5%.
AutoCanada was up 4.1% to $26.62. I am not aware of any particular “reason” for this (which is not unusual as stocks move every day for reasons that may sometimes be known only to the buyers and sellers). This stock is at a 52 week high after having bottomed out about a year ago at $16.06. The low came after a vicious decline from highs around $90 in the Spring of 2014. The peak in 2014 came after a tremendous surge from the $17 level in late winter of 2013. These type of price movements can certainly be in turn exhilarating and then devastating for owners. I started buying this stock “too early” on the way down. But I did buy some at prices below the current price and overall I believe I am nearing about a break even position on this stock. (That’s not something that I actually track in aggregate, but looking at the gain and loss in the four accounts where I hold it, I estimate I am near break even.)
It’s interesting to think about how the owner of an individual car dealership in Alberta (where AutoCanada has most of its dealerships) would have fared since early 2013. Someone who owned a dealership for many years and had no intention of selling would have faced probably significantly lower profits in starting in late 2014. They would have been aware that the value of their dealership if they wanted to sell was lower. But that might not have been very much of a concern if no sale was planned. Warren Buffett advises share owners (and I prefer the more permanent sounding term “share owners” rather than share holders) to think more like the owner of a business and less like the temporary owner of blips on a screen.
Couche-Tard was up 3.1% to $61.25, causing me to wonder if I should not have added to my position as it dipped under $60 last week. But then again, I don’t want to get in a big hurry and it is quite possible indeed (as it always is) that the market will offer up some better bargains before too long.
U.S. financials were mostly positive on Friday as several large banks reported earnings that were apparently reasonably pleasing to analysts.