On Thursday the S&P 500 was up 2.1% and Toronto was up 0.7%.
Nvidia was the big news with a 16% gain in price which was a $277 billion dollar gain in wealth and market cap overnight.
I will admit to feeling left out of the gains of Nvidia and the other members of the magnificent 7.
The other gainers today pale in comparison to Nvidia but Visa was up 2.5% and lululemon was up 2.7% and Toll Brothers was up 2.0%.
The Melcor REIT announced after the close that it is suspending the dividend and undertaking a strategic review. The distribution elimination is unfortunate but it’s possible that the Strategic Review could result in the unit price rising. But it could take a number of months before anything good comes out of this. Meanwhile there could be some panic selling.
It seems to be increasingly the case that it is better to invest in large higher quality companies. Many smaller companies have not been good investments.
In other news Canadian Retail sales for December were reported today. Retail sales in December were up 2.9% year-over-year. I found it interesting that “beer, wine and liquor” sales were down 5.5%. That’s in spite of inflation. People are cutting back on alcohol. That’s probably mostly due to tighter budgets due to inflation on necessities and may also be for health reasons. Other discretionary categories were down as well. Sporting goods were down 5.1%. That echoes the weak results at SportChek that Canadian Tire reported and was partly related to the unseasonable warm weather in December. Furniture retailers were down 6.6%.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/240222/t002a-eng.htm
I’ve been mentioning the Canadian Western Bank preferred shares that are due for a dividend rest at the end of April. I realised today that the new dividend rate will be reset based on the 5 year government of Canada bond yield on April 1 plus the reset spread applicable to each of the two shares. The CWB.PR.B shares are trading at $21.50 and it’s possible that CWB might decide to redeem them at $25. If not the dividend yield will rise to a reasonably attractive level. The CWB.PR.D shares ate at $24.86. They will pay a dividend of 37.5 cents on April 30 and I expect them to almost certainly be redeemed on April 30. .