Canadian Tire’s Q4 earnings were strong and the stock is up about 7%. And this on a day when markets are about flat. I sold too early. (They say you can’t go broke taking a profit. But that’s poor advice and you sure can leave a lot of money on the table). The conference call coming up at 1 pm eastern could change the tone a bit. In any case I will plan to update this company by the start of next week. It looks like management here is once again to be congratulated. Like Bombardier this stock has a dual class share structure and is family controlled. Unlike Bombardier it has an outside Chair person and a good Board composition and is well managed. It’s also in a better industry.
Looking at today’s StatsCanada alert I find:
“The preliminary 2014 edition of the Report on Energy Supply and Demand in Canada is now available.” (That sounds less than useful given the energy price changes since 2014 but I suppose it would be of interest to some people).
Wholesale sales were strong in December:
“Wholesale sales rose 2.0% to $57.2 billion in December. Gains were recorded in four of seven subsectors, accounting for 66% of wholesale sales, and were led by the motor vehicle and parts subsector. Excluding this subsector, wholesale sales edged up 0.1%.”
Inflation due to the low Chadian dollar might account for some of this. But overall, it appears that much of the economy is humming along not too badly.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/160218/dq160218a-eng.htm?cmp=mstatcan
Note that sometimes it is not clear in Stats Canada reports whether they are talking about versus last month or last year. (Which is rather an unforgivable sin, although in their tables as opposed to text it is usually clear) In this case the comparison is to November 2015 and it does not appear that the percentages are annualised.
They also note that wholesale sales in Alberta were down 9.4% versus the prior year. That is ugly. Ontario was up 4.5%.
Unemployment Insurance recipients were up in Alberta in December as well.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/160218/dq160218b-eng.htm?cmp=mstatcan