On Thursday, the S&P 500 rose 0.8% as the House of representatives passed a proposed income tax reduction bill. The Senate republicans hope to pass their different version of the bill in the next couple of weeks. If that occurs the two bills would need to be reconciled into one final version and passed by both the Senate and the House, as I understand it. It’s not a done deal yet.
Meanwhile, Toronto was up 0.4%.
Walmart was a huge winner up 10.9% to $99.62 after releasing Q3 earnings. The improved earnings and outlook has surprised the market. The Walton family still owns about half of the shares and they saw a gain in their wealth of around $16 billion today. 10.9% produces a really big gain when it is applied to something in the order of $155 billion. The Walton’s collectively are easily America’s richest family. The big excitement today was driven by online sales being up about 50%, store traffic being up 1.5% and same-store sales up 2.7%. It remains to be seen if this big share price jump will sustained.
CRH Medical finished the say up 11.2%. The company indicated to me that it has not yet bought back any shares. Ceapro finished the day up 5.4%.
TFI Industries (formerly TransForce) was up 2.8%. Dollarama was up another 2.5%.
Overall, it was a very strong day for the markets.