On Tuesday, the S&P 500 and Toronto were each up 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average crested the 23,000 level for the first time ever and closed just under that round number.
Bombardier had a good day up 15.7% and its preferred shares that are on our list were up 7.2%. CRH Medical was down 3.5% on Toronto.
AutoCanada was down 2.6%. This came on a day when Statistics Canada released August new vehicle sales numbers that looked strong to me.
The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions announced certain tighter mortgage rules today. When asked “what if this causes significant house price declines”? The head of OSFI basically replied “Not My Problem” (not in so many words of course, but that was the gist of his response). And I agree it is not OSFI’s job to support house prices. OSFI’s key role I believe is to insure banks don’t lend on such stupid terms as to endanger the safety of the bank deposits of Canadians. But OSFI would not likely want to cause a house price decline leading to mortgage defaults which would weaken bank balance sheets.
A lot of things have been tried to attempt to cool Canada’s hot housing market. Maybe this one will work. And once it starts to work it may be no soft landing. We shall see.