On Wednesday, the S&P 500 was up 0.4% and Toronto was up 0.6%.
The Canadian dollar is at 77 U.S. cents. Earlier this year it touched 68 cents and a LOT of people seemed to think it was heading to 60 cents. “Run and get your investments into U.S. dollars” they said. Which has not worked out so well for them.
I would have liked to move more dollars back to Canada in the lower 70’s but found I did not wish to sell the U.S. stocks I held and also I dislike the hefty currency translation fees. In any case, I did move some dollars from the U.S. to Canada, most recently at 73 cents. Overall I moved dollars from the U.S back to Canada too early as I did so as the Canadian dollar fell. But I think doing that made more sense than assuming that it was going to keep falling. The Canadian dollar definitely fell more than I ever expected it to.
Notable gainers on the market today included Stantec up 6.0% to $33.85. Those who contracted to buy the subscription receipts yesterday or perhaps early today at $30.25 have had a good day. I put in for 300 shares and got allocated only 100 shares. That means that this $604 million (with the over-allotment) share issue was fully subscribed and in fact perhaps three times over subscribed. This is $604 million of money flowing into Stantec’s hands. And investors were apparently prepared to invest substantially more than that given the over-subscription. Today TD Direct sent out notices of two more secondary offerings of shares; for Silver Wheaton and for Firm Capital. Clearly, some investors have ample cash and are willing to buy.
Another big gainer was Dollarama, was up 7.5%.
A good day for investors. So much for all those people who avoid stock markets because they mistakenly think it is a zero-sum game or because they think the “market is rigged”.