Thursday was a strong day in the markets as the S&P 500 rose 0.7% and Toronto rose 0.4%.
The great majority of stocks were up including:
Aecon Group, up 2.5%
Apple, up 2.1% (I plan to post an updated report on Apple tomorrow)
Shopify up another 3.0%.
Linamar, up 3.2% (Surprising given its recent press release about the declines in industry volumes in the the industries it competes in. Perhaps the market is focusing on the benefits of trade deals expected to be signed soon.)
CMHC posted data on new home starts for December. The figures I am most interested in are single family home starts in Alberta. Alberta single family home starts were up 19% versus 2018 (which was no-doubt a weak month). Edmonton was up 2% while Calgary was up 58%. For the year, Alberta single family home starts were down 12%. But this data as well as the data for each month since September is encouraging.
Meanwhile, Statistics Canada reported single family building permit data for November. For Alberta, it showed a 10% gain versus 2018, also encouraging – although 2018 was a particularly weak comparable period. And, overall building permits in Alberta were down 9% which was not encouraging.