On Monday, the S&P 500 was down 0.8% while Toronto managed a 0.1% gain.
There seems to be a lot happening in the news. The U.S. has now charged Huawei and its CFO Meng Wanzhou, who is facing an extradition hearing in Vancouver. I don’t particularly understand much about this but it certainly is not a good development in regards to trade with China for either Canada or the U.S.
The U.S. is apparently considering sending 5000 troops to Columbia in vase they are needed in regards to Venezuela.
Reports are that the Mueller report is near completion.
So, lot’s of things for the market to worry about.
Linamar was down 2.6%. Penny stock, Ceapro was down 9% but that may just be fairly normal volatility for that stock.
The price of Stantec and WSP did not react to the problems that SNC has revealed.
Fortis Inc. announced that it has an agreement to sell its ts 51% interest in the Waneta Expansion Hydroelectric Project in British Columbia for approximately $1 billion. The market showed little or no reaction to the news. It’s beyond me why they would not have stated what gain (or less likely, loss) they expect to book on the sale. Also if it was an acquisition they would be telling us it was accretive and probably by how many cents per share. But no word here on how dilutive this is to earnings per share. They do indicate that the funds will be used in their capital investments which would indicate that the lost earnings will be restored. In any case Fortis is a very well-managed company and presumably this transaction is beneficial. Fortis prefers regulated assets or at least those with really long contracted cashflows. This transaction may directionally reduce their risk assuming that the entire output of the dam was not contracted for decades to financially strong buyers.
Vale has suffered a tragic and deadly dam failure in Brazil on Friday last week. I wondered if BHP Billiton might go down on the news given that they had a huge dam failure in Brazil in 2015 on a dam that they owned in partnership with Vale. I believe Vale was the operator. BHP has been wanting to resume operations but this latest development probably at least delays that. BHP’s stock does not seem to be affected by this latest failure so far. There has been no press release from BHP about it to address any possible impact on BHP. Mining always seems to be a tough way to make money. These dam failures have not only caused deaths but have been an environmental disaster.