Markets were mostly down on Monday although the Dow Jones ended the day up 0.4%. The S&P 500 was down 0.4% and Toronto was down 0.2%.
Canadian Tire was down 3.3%, RioCan was down 2.5% – both of these probably related to the Ontario lockdowns. Linamar was down 3.4%.
Constellation Software was up 3.0% and Shopify was up 2.4%.
I am taking a close look at Royal Bank. I think it’s clear that this is a Buy but I want to study it a bit more. It’s amazing how fast it continues to grow year after year and to post strong returns on equity. Earnings were down in 2020 due to provisions for loans losses but that’s likely to be just a minor speed bump.
The $900 billion stimulus Bill will apparently be passed shortly. Apparently it is 5000 pages and the people voting have not been able to read much of it before voting. There is something seriously wrong when this bill is 5000 pages. I believe it has been subjected to what is called “Christmas treeing” – each senator and congress person gets to adorn it with their favorite ornament or bobble in return for their vote. Since this Bill is smaller than hoped for the market is unlikely to get excited by it at all.
Some things that the market is probably starting to worry about include:
Trump’s antics around delegitimizing, or in his dreams over-turning, Biden’s Presidency. It’s getting harder to ignore.
The virus of course.
The Russian cyber attack – when you think about how dependent we all are on the internet, a large scale cyber attack is truly frightening.