This post was sent by email on November 24th:
Anyone trying to log into investorsfriend.com in the past couple of days will have seen a security warning and not been able to get in. My apologies for that. I need a new SSL security certificate and it is being worked on. In theory, it will be fixed by Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile here are my market comments as of Tuesday evening.
Optimism about the vaccines and the Biden transition proceeding have over-shadowed lots of bad news on the virus front.
The DOW is at a record high. The S&P 500 was up 1.6% today and Toronto was up 1.0% adding to recent gains.
Oil prices have risen significantly in the past few days.
Most stocks have risen in the past few days.
Canadian Western Bank is up to $31.25.
Melcor is finally showing some life. The Melcor REIT has risen from the recent $4 range to close at $4.98 today. Still well below where we would hope but a welcome rise. This came after FIRM Capital who own a lot of units put out a press release urging Melcor Developments to take the REIT private at $8.70 per unit. This is probably quite unrealistic but possibly it will spark Melcor to do something. But Melcor has a history of just doing its own thing and they may not do anything. The Melcor REIT will ultimately recover when the pandemic subsides and the Alberta economy improves. It could recover earlier if Melcor increases the distribution or does take some action to boost the unit price, but we really can’t count on that. Alberta has just announced a 3 week partial lockdown and so that is not good news for collecting commercial rents.
Melcor Developments also rose on the news and on higher oil prices to the $8 level from a recent $6 level. This is a welcome gain but it still trades way down at about 25% of book value. These shares will also recover when the pandemic subsides and I am confident that Melcor has the balance sheet to ride out the remainder of this storm. But unless oil keeps rising or there is some corporate action to boost the share price there may not be much reason for the shares to keep rising until the pandemic does end.
Meanwhile Couche-Tard was out with earnings after the close and it appears to be another blow-out quarter. Gasoline profit margins were exceptionally high. They are raising the dividend.