On Friday the S&P 500 was up 0.2% while Toronto was up 0.6%.
On Thursday and continuing somewhat on Friday the tow Brookfield Office Properties (BPO) preferred shares were down a total of over 10% after S&P downgraded the debt of its parent Brookfield Property Partners from BBB minus, to BB (which is called Junk status or non-investment grade.) This parent guarantees the preferred shares but the ultimate Brookfield Corporation parent does not.
I have said that these two are quite risky and that certainly the market judges them to be quite risky. This credit downgrade hade been rumored for several months. I find it a bit annoying that S&P was slow to do this and now they finally do it when bond interest rates have declined which will benefit this company. Brookfield seems to remain very confident that these properties will do well over time. They finance each property separately on a non-recourse basis and so they have handed a few problematic properties back to lenders. Overall, these shares are risky I will continue to hold on the expectation that they are likely (but not guaranteed) to recover over time. And they are likely to continue to pay the dividend. Of course I would not want to be too heavily exposed to a risky position like this.