Tuesday saw the S&P 500 rise 0.4% and Toronto 0.15%.
Linamar was up 3.0% to $59.38 modestly rewarding those who were brave enough to buy near its recent low of under $55.
Toll Brothers was up 2.8%. My betting is that this stock will rise as the U.S. economy continues to be strong.
AutoCanada recovered 1.85% but will likely continue to be volatile.
Berkshire Hathaway announced that it has authorized Buffett and Munger to buy back shares if they BOTH think the shares are trading below a conservative calculation of intrinsic value. Previously they were allowed to buy back only up to a maximum of 120% of book value – and it almost never trades that low. Berkshire has piles of cash. Also book value is not as useful a gunge of its intrinsic value as it once was when marketable securities formed a larger percentage of its assets. If they do buy back any stock we won’t likely know about it until a large amount has been purchased. Buffett can certainly keep a secret. And you don’t get to be a broker for Buffett unless you can keep a secret. They can probably buy a substantial amount over a period of at least weeks before they will be required to disclose the purchases.
Anyone holding Berkshire shares and thinking of selling has now “been warned” that Berkshire might be the buyer – which should give pause to anyone thinking about the wisdom of selling.
But knowing Buffett, this is no guarantee of immediate action. He could very well be waiting for a lower price. But my suspicion is they will do some buying very soon.
Statistics Canada reported on manufacturing activity for May which did show reasonably strong growth versus April.
The survey of large retailers for May was also released. Sales appear to be up quite strongly from the prior year. But Statistics Canada did not include a discussion of the results and it’s a bit clunky on their system to get into the tables. Usually this sort of data is seasonally adjusted but this did not seem to be which means you have to compare it the same month last year as opposed to April this year.