Monday was a very strong day in the markets after pfiser reported extremely promising preliminary results from its Coronavirus vaccine phase II trial.
The S&P 500 closed up 1.2%, The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 2.95% and Toronto was up 1.2%..
Even as the gains subsided somewhat at the end of the day there were many large gains including:
American Express – which soared 21%
The Canadian Energy sector ETF (symbol XEG) was up 16%
RioCan was up 12%
Heineken was up 11%
Going the other way were some of the stocks that had benefited most from the virus situation:
Shopify was down 14%
Amazon was down 5%
Toll Brothers was down 9%.
Looking at the markets since the election, I note that the Presidential race turned out as I feared it might with Trump ahead on election night and then Biden winning after the mail-in ballots were counted. I got that right but it so far seems I was wrong to predict that that outcome would lead to markets declining given that Trump and his followers would dispute the election.
The lesson there is that it is ALWAYS very difficult to predict markets. I am certainly glad that I did not do something radical like move largely to cash in advance of the election. A one-sided bet like that is more of a gamble than an investment strategy. Time and again the markets have shown that a fairly heavy exposure to equities wins out over time -even if it scares the crap out of us once in a while such as last March.
Given my interest in Melcor, I updated the report for the Melcor REIT for its Q3 report which came out on Thursday, after the close. It appears to be undervalued but keep in mind it is very largely concentrated in Alberta which not only has its woes but is generally out of favor with investors at this time.