On Tuesday, the S&P 500 was up 0.1% and Toronto was up 0.5%.
Amazon was up 1.8% to $1988.
AutoCanada lost more ground ans it was down 2.7% to $10.81.
Toll Brothers was down 2.2% to $36.25 and continues to lanquish despite the strong U.S. economy and its still-strong earnings. According to Yahoo Finance its forward P/E ratio is 8.6. That would imply an earnings per share decrease of 18% but would also make it still cheap. The price to book ratio is 1.07 and the assets would appear to be quite solid.
CRH Medical was down 3.7%.
Couche-Tard reported earnings after the close which were apparently disappointing. Preliminary indications are that this was mostly related to volatile fuel margins. Same-store merchandise sales growth was very strong in each of its three main geographies.
Housing starts in Canada were up strongly in June versus May. I pay most attention to single family starts and particularly in Alberta. Also, I focus on year over year changes rather than comparing to last month. Alberta single family starts were down 8%. But that is a good improvement from recent months that were down by a third. And Edmonton starts were down only 2% year over year. That is a positive since Melcor Developments is more concentrated in and near Edmonton rather than Calgary (which was down 14%). Overall the figures are encouraging but nothing to get too excited about. Multi-family starts in Alberta were up 48% year over year in June but that tends to be a volatile figure.
Yesterday, I mentioned the updates for Canadian Western Bank and for two of its rate reset preferred shares. Investors have been badly burned by rate reset shares. But some rate reset shares were issued at spreads of just 2.3% over the five year Canada bond. The two CWB shares are trading at spreads of about 4.2% higher than the 5 year Canada bond. The risk of price declines still exists but is far less than it would be at the old tighter spreads. Also these two have close to 5 years to go before they will reset and so a 5.8% yield can be locked in for a long time. The point is that rate reset preferred shares are worth considering despite the poor historical experience. I believe CWB is cheap and also worth considering.