Markets were moderately lower again on Wednesday as the S&P 500 fell 1.1% and Toronto was down 0.3%.
Stocks are set to decline again to day. This year has seen huge gains in the markets and so it is not surprising to see some of that being given back.
The latest Teranet home price index is out and. By clicking the link you can explore the increases in 32 different cities or metro areas across Canada. Their headline is that the price growth remains strong but slowed in July.
BHP was down 6.2% as the market is not impressed with the profit potential of the huge new Potash mine it is developing in Saskatchewan. The spending on that mine is large boost for the Saskatchewan economy and so is very good news for the province. But BHP has indicated that it is only going ahead with the project because having spent U.S. $4.5 billion to date, it makes sense to spend another U.S. $5.7 billion or so rather than write-off the $4.5 billion. In addition BHP is divesting its oil and gas operations and announced a large dividend. The company also has a strange dual share listing and the two different shares trade at different prices despite being supposedly economically equivalent. They now intend to unify the two share classes. I have previously written that would pick the lower price share since the premium for the other one did not make sense to me. BHP is a commodity company and inherently hard to predict as an investment.