CIBC is out with a 5.15% rate reset preferred share. This is not an exciting investment but for those looking for yield in a portfolio and especially for tax efficient yield in a taxable portfolio it is worth considering. As of about an hour after TD sent an alert about this, the issue is still open. This is only very slightly lower than the 5.2% they issued at in April. It represents a spread of of about 3.63% over the five year Canada bond. Despite lower interest rates the market is still demanding a relatively high spread over the five year Canada bond. Unless that market spread goes down we will not likely see much recovery in the various rate rest preferred shares. I had explained some of the reasons why rate rest preferred shares have struggled in a newsletter in March.
Checking Western Canadian Select oil price, it was down to U.S. $40.41 yesterday, down 8%. It got as high as $55 in April so going back to about $40 is certainly disappointing for Alberta.
Checking the latest rail car loading reports the latest week for Canada shows a very small increase versus 2018. Car ladings had been noticeably higher than 2018 from late March to early May but are relatively similar to 2018 for the past two weeks reported. In this latest week Petroleum products are up significantly versus last year and coal and chemicals are up as well. Grain is about unchanged. Everything else (Intermodal, Forest, Farm excluding grain, minerals and motor vehicles are down. This could indicate some softening of the the economy in the past couple of weeks. If looking at the data you need to select Canada as it defaults to the U.S.