On Wednesday, the S&P 500 was down 0.3% and Toronto was up 0.1%.
Fedex was down 3.3% after releasing earnings. I plan to update that report next.
Statistics Canada reported that rail car loadings for October were down 0.6% versus last year. I use a more up to date source which indicates that:
Canadian rail car loadings had been running slightly higher than last year in October and particularly in November but slipped to equal 2015 in the latest week reported. Intermodal (consumer goods) had been running nicely above 2015 levels but were only equal in the latest week reported (which may have been affected by very cold weather the past week). Petroleum and petroleum products and coal have been particularly weak running well below 2015 levels.
The pattern in the U.S. was somewhat similar.
A report today indicated that “U.S. home resales unexpectedly rose in November, reaching their highest level in nearly 10 years, likely as buyers rushed into the market to lock in low interest rates in anticipation of further increases in borrowing costs.” That is exactly the scenario that I hope is happening at Toll Brothers.
Regarding strategies for moving currency between Canadian and U.S. dollars within investment accounts, here is my latest attempt: In an RRSP or Margin account that is split into a Canadian dollar portion and a U.S. dollar portion I have used the strategy of buying DLR.u which is a U.S. dollar fund trading on Toronto and then having that “journaled to the Canadian side of the account where it can be sold as DLR to receive Canadian dollars. The minor fly in that ointment was an additional charge of $40 from TD Direct which I believe only applied because I was selling the DLR immediately on the Canadian side even though my purchase of DLR.u would officially take 3 days to settle.
My strategy on this latest attempt is to take some of my U.S. cash and buy DLR. The idea is to do this ahead of the time that I want to do the exchange. Then I can have that “journaled” to the Canadian side (apparently for no fee but requiring a phone call) and effectively have U.S. dollars (albeit in a fund) sitting on the Canadian side of my account where it can be sold for Canadian dollars at any time. I believe this should avoid the $40 fee.
In trying to do this today I placed an order for DLR.u. I noticed that the last few trades had fluctuated between $9.95 and $9.94. I decided to try to buy at 9.94 rather than paying the ask price of $9.95. The result so far is that trade did not go through. This may not have been a wise strategy on my part. Saving 10 basis points is only $1.00 per $1000 or say $25 on $25,000. It also appears that the volume of trade is very low. Basically in using the DLR Norbert gambit one has to be prepared to lose about 20 basis points in hidden costs to the bid/ask spread, 10 basis points on the buy and 10 on the sell. Trying to avoid that takes time and could see a much larger move in the currency go against you.
I really don’t much like to fool around moving money back and forth. My preferred strategy was to allocate say 30% of my portfolio to the U.S. side a few years ago and just leave it there. Permanently. For eventual spending in the U.S. But the slide in the Canadian dollar over the past couple of years and the strong performance of my U.S. stocks has me arguably over-weight the U.S. side and so I am now inclined to move some back to the Canadian side.