Stocks managed a small gain on Wednesday with the S&P 500 up 0.3% and Toronto was up 0.1%.
Shopify was notable with a 6.9% gain. But it then came out with earnings after the close disclosing a large loss but with revenues up 27%. The stock was down about 10% in U.S. after-hours trading. But the after-hours trading on news tends to be quite trigger happy and sometimes a different picture emerges over night once analysts have had a bit more time to digest the news.
Long-term interest rates have climbed noticeably in the past few weeks. So far the stock markets have pretty much ignored that. But now that the U.S. Q4 earnings season is over the market may turn its attention more to this headwind of higher long-term interest rates. At this time, I’m more inclined to increase my cash position as opposed to my equity position. The difficulty is always in deciding what stocks I might like to sell down. Doing nothing for another day or week is always a default option.
After the close RioCan announced good Q4 results and announced a 6% distribution increase. As I mentioned in my update of December 17, I was expecting a distribution increase. Therefore RioCan may not move on this good news since it was probably about as expected.
CMHC reported January home start data today. Alberta managed to have only a 2% decline in detached single family home starts compared to January a year ago while all the other big provinces had large declines. Ontario and B.C. both had big gains in multi-family starts.