On Friday, the S&P 500 was up 0.2%.
Toronto was up 0.7% as the price of oil climbed because OPEC agreed to production increases that were smaller than expected/feared (feared by those who want higher oil prices, which is certainly not everyone).
Yahoo Finance at the moment (about 9:10 pm eastern time Sunday) is showing West Texas oil at $68.21 up 4.1%. Yahoo is hard to understand. On their graph it looks like the price increase took place on Friday not over the weekend and in fact the price is down very slightly in Sunday trading. CNBC seems to show it correctly, down 0.4% on Sunday to $68.33. In any case, oil is up several dollars in the past trading day or two.
Stocks that rose on Friday included BHP Billiton, up 2.4%.
Couche-Tard was up 1.9%. Speaking of Couche-Tard I notice that their competitor 7-11 has put in several brand new stores in Edmonton. Most of the new ones that I saw do not have gasoline sales. 7-11 had put in a store on Jasper avenue probably six or seven years ago. It surprised me to see it go in since previous to that there were just a few grubby convenience stores in that area and probably some smoke shops hidden in the office buildings. Well, that store was immediately very busy and stayed that way. The point is that these convenience stores seem to be remarkably busy in a lot of cases and that’s why Couche-Tard and 7-11 and probably others invest a lot of money in them. A bright clean 7-11 or Circle-K can draw a lot of traffic that was not about to enter a smelly grubby store with bars on the windows. A nice modern store seems like a welcome addition to various city neighborhoods.
Penny stock, Ceapro was up three cents or 5.8% but I would not read anything into that. (When three cents makes six percent, that is a far different story than when it takes six dollars to make 6%)
Statistics Canada reported retail trade figures on Friday.
Following three consecutive monthly increases, retail sales in April declined 1.2% to $49.5 billion. The decrease was primarily due to lower sales at motor vehicle and parts dealers. Inclement weather in many parts of Canada may have contributed to the overall decline in April. Excluding sales at motor vehicle and parts dealers, retail sales were down 0.1% in April.
So, a weak report but given it came after three moths of increases it’s too early to tell if it is a trend. And I note that sales were still up year over year including 2.2% in Alberta. Usually, these reports can be interpreted as positive or negative and it often depends on the agenda of who is looking at the report as to how they want to interpret it.
Statistics Canada also reported inflation numbers.
Again there were pluses and minuses. In general the report was viewed as showing that core inflation is tame and this has somewhat reduced the betting on a Bank of Canada interest rate hike in July.