On Tuesday, the S&P 500 was up 0.5% while Toronto fell 0.2%.
BHP Billiton jumped 5.1% (The BBL American Depository receipts in New York). I don’t see any news or earnings release to explain that. It might have been an increase in the price of iron ore or copper. I don’t follow (much less try to predict) the prices of those commodities so I don’t know. There was some news about BHP fighting a lawsuit and perhaps the estimated pay-out has gone down.
Linamar bounced up 2.05%.
TFI International which has been strong this year gave back 4.4%. Possible due to trade war fears or maybe it was just considered to have risen too quickly.
AutoCanada continues to slump, down 2.7%.
Toll Brothers was down 1.8%.
The Boston pizza units slipped another 1.1%. Further to my comments this morning the issue may be that 28% of the restaurants are located in Alberta and Statistics Canada reported Monday morning that restaurant sales were up about 6% in Canada overall but virtually 0% in Alberta year over year in May. And, the weather in Alberta in May was good to very good as I recall after a poor weather month in April. It also may be that competition is stronger in Alberta. I know that a chain called Brown’s Social House has been expanding as has the The Canadian Brewhouse. These are somewhat more “drinks” oriented (especially obviously the Brewhouse) so I don’t know how directly those two compete with BP. Well, we will see how same-store sales do in Q2 when they report in early August. If they have not increased I would have to conclude it is more a BP-specific problem since the industry overall is showing increased sales. I believe that the distributions here are “safe” with the exception that if same stores sales do decline it is possible that a very small cut to the distribution would be made – but I believe BP will strenuously try to avoid that.
I have enough of these units but I did grab some for a relative’s account that I look after.