On Thursday, the S&P 500 ended the day up 0.5% while Toronto was about unchanged.
Stantec was up 9.3% after releasing Q4 earnings and a strong outlook for 2023. As a side point, it would be a great thing is Turkey started using reputable engineering companies for their buildings. It’s very sad to see that quite modern buildings fell becasue they were not properly designed and/or constructed.
WSP Global was up 2.9% probably pulled up by Stantec although WSP had already released earnings about two weeks ago.
Toll Brothers was up 2.5%,
I saw the alert today from TD Waterhouse about Lithium Royalty Corporation issuing shares. That’s not the sort of thing I normally buy and I would have no ability to analyse it. But it’s likely to be popular. And it could do very well if lithium prices rise. And as a Royalty unit it probably can’t go broke although the units could fall in price if the lithium market got saturated. I did not try to buy immediately and when I decided to throw in a few dollars as a speculation the issue had already closed.
Another issue a day or so ago was Morguard North American Residential REIT with a 6.0% convertible debenture. It is still open. I have not analysed it in any way but I suspect it might be a decent investment. But you would have to be prepared to hold until maturity in 5 years and these units often trade below book value. The REIT is trading at $18.36 and the conversion price is $24.15 so there is perhaps not a lot of chance that the conversion option would happen. Overall there are probably better places to get 6%. Which is why these debentures did not sell out yet.
I was wondering today, how 5 year GIC rates compare to the 5 year Canada bond. I’m not interested in buying 5 year GICs but the rate on those forms a sort of competition for other fixed income investments.
Let’s see TD today is showing 4.0 to 4.3% for a 5 year GIC. That’s up to 0.76% higher than the yield on a 5 year government of Canada bond currently at 3.54%. So a couple things:
1: This certainly seems like a case where the little people get a better deal that big institutional investors.
2: The ability to get 4.3% on a GIC has to be kept in mind when comparing it to something like a rate reset preferred share that pays about 6% but will fluctuate in value and reset to a different unknown interest rate. But if the rate reset preferred is in a taxable account then the dividend tax credit also has to be considered.