On Tuesday some fear returned to the market and the S&P 500 was down 1.4% and Toronto was down 0.8%.
BHP was down 3.2% in New York (the BBL shares).
CN Rail was down 3.2%. Amazon was down 3.8%. CRH Medical was down 3.5% in Toronto.
Our one penny stock , Ceapro. was up 5.7%. It’s a highly speculative stock but could pay off as it has some products at various stages of trials or planned trials. I was under the impression that they were running a 12 week trial but upon checking I see it is an 18 to 24 month trial.
“The 18-24-month study will enroll approximately 280 subjects who cannot tolerate high doses of current treatments. Patients enrolled will be randomized to receive either placebo, low, medium or high doses of beta glucan (500 mg tablet) as add-on therapy to atorvastatin 10 mg – 20 mg or an equivalent statin for a 12-week treatment period. The primary efficacy endpoint of the study will be the change over 12 weeks in LDL-cholesterol. ”
So, perhaps there will be no major results for a long time yet.
Regarding the Canadian Western Bank 6.0% preferred share. I had placed an order (technically an “expression of interest”) for 1000 shares yesterday morning. I was allocated 400 shares. That suggests the offering was substantially over-subscribed. This would also suggest that the 6.0% return was somewhat above market. If market conditions remain unchanged I would therefore expect these shares to begin trading a little over $25.
Statistics Canada reported manufacturing sales for November. The result was a modest decline. But it appears that the decline was caused by lower petroleum refining. I believe that may have been partly due to shut downs at the customer end. Still, it was not a positive report overall.
Statistics Canad also reported sales at food service and drinking places for November. The results showed a small increase versus October and a strong 5.1% increase versus the prior year including 2.9% for Alberta. This should bode well for Boston Pizza except that BP has been showing modest declines (around 0.4%) in same store sales for the past four quarters despite the fact that the industry overall has seen relatively good gains most or all months in that time period.
Statistics Canada (they were busy today) also reported Wholesale trade figures for November. The report showed little growth year over year.
All three of the above reports included handy tables that summarized the percentage change versus October as well as month over month ans showed this by province. For some reason, there are other reports (including the residential investment report I mentioned yesterday) that don’t give those handy tables. In those cases it can be very tedious to try to extract the data and calculate the year over year change. I usually focus on year over year changes.