Today is the last trading day of the year.
On Thursday, the S&P 500w as about unchanged while Toronto was down 0.4%.
Markets are relatively quiet but down mostly so far today.
Aecon Group is up 2.9%% after announcing it has paid off its 5% convertible debenture as scheduled.
I have not had any great luck with the various convertibles debentures that I looked at and and had on the list or mentioned over the past few years. Occasionally the convertible feature can pay off. But in that case it would have been better to simply own the underlying stock directly.
These convertibles paying about 5% to 6% seemed attractive a few years ago when GICs and high interest accounts were paying very little. But they were and are more risky. In the majority of cases they will pay out at maturity as promised. But they are issued by weaker companies and there is always some chance of a significant loss. I’ve pretty much lost my taste for these and will hope those I hold matures as promised. I hold a material amount of the convertible debenture of the Melcor REIT which I am quite confident will pay off as scheduled at the end of 2024. But I have very small amounts of two others that look very risky risky. HOT.DB.V and ECN.DB.A.