On Wednesday, the S&P 500 was down 0.1% while Toronto was about unchanged.
Canadian Western Bank was up 1.7% to $36.73. This bank is benefiting from the strong recovery in Alberta. The recession in Alberta bottomed out around November of 2016. While the economy has not fully recovered, there has been a substantial recovery.
Oil jumped 2.2% today to $58.06. The Conference Board of Canada in a new report estimates that Alberta’s GDP growth for 2017 will come in at 6.7%! The Alberta Treasury Branch economists put the estimate lower but still strong at 4%. Statistics Canada recently reported that the investment in single family housing in Alberta in September had risen 35% year over year although it was still down 23% from the September 2014 level.
With the continued recovery in Alberta and particularly with the market and pricing for new single family houses apparently doing well, I would expect Melcor’s share price to eventually react positively. AutoCanada has also been benefiting from the recovery.
The Alberta government has an “economic dashboard” web site. Clicking there you can see that most of the indicators that they are tracking are green which indicates improvement. I have also noticed that the government employee(s) responsible for this site seem to update it immediately when new data becomes available. Government workers are often maligned but I think they deserve credit in this case.