On Friday, the S&P 500 was up 1.3% and Toronto was up 0.6%.
Berkshire Hathaway was up 2.9%, TFI International, FedEx and Constellation Software were each up 2.1%
Among the relatively few stocks on our list that were down was Linamar, down 1.5%.
An insider at Canadian Western Bank bought 3,250 shares at $29 today which is another vote of confidence.
Toll Brothers announced that it will team up with J.P. Morgan Asset Management to construct a 421 unit rental building in Westchester New York’s Platinum mile. This is a $78 million investment for Toll Brother’s half of the cost. For context, Toll Brother has assets of $10,245 million. Westchester is within an easy transit commute form New York City. Toll Brothers also sells single family homes in Westchester including this town house project with prices around $1.0 to $1.2 million.
Regarding getting Alberta’s oil to market. CN and a First Nation have announced that they will invest $16.7 million each along with a yet-to-named third partner to build a plant to turn bitumen into plastic coated pucks that can be shipped (presumably to the coast) via open hopper rail cars at far less cost than shipping in tanker cars. The plant would take two years to complete. The First Nation must be confident of the technology since this is a big investment for them. The capacity would be 10,000 barrels per day which compares to existing rail shipments of 330,000 barrels per day. For CN this is not a large investment. It is interesting to consider that the mandated production cuts in Alberta which have increased the price of Alberta heavy oil and bitumen actually harms the economics of this project. The economics will depend on the “spread” between Alberta heavy oil and bitumen and world oil prices when the plant is operating. Those spreads are very hard to predict. Each project that works to get more oil out reduces the spread. For the Alberta economy overall, this is good news. It’s small and not immediate but another step in the right direction.
If rail shipments are any indication, Canada’s economy continues to grow in January. Rail car shipments are up sharply in the first two weeks of January versus the prior year. Intermodal, which is consumer goods, was up and petroleum was up sharply. Auto and auto parts were down moderately while all other categories appeared to be up or at least similar to last year. You can see the figures here. Click the “radio” button to Canada and then explore the different commodities.