The market down-draft that was supposed to happen Monday came a day late.
In Canada we had news that housing starts are running at 245,000 per year. Meanwhile the U.S. is running at about 680,000. If you consider the usual rule of thumb that the U.S. economy and population is about 10 times that of Canada you see that Canada is enormously stronger than the U.S. Most observers feel that Canada’s housing starts are running too high while America’s are probably half where they should be. The U.S. is forming new households about twice as fast as it builds new houses and this is slowly bringing down the excess supply of houses in the U.S.
In Canada the strong housing starts bodes well for Melcor. It should report Q1 earnings before long and I expect a good report and probably a good outlook.
I was tempted to add to my Canadian Tire position today with the stock down 2.3%. It reports earnings on Friday, so I will most likely wait to see the earnings.