Month: April 2013

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Today marks the 117^th Boston Marathon.  I was, like you, shocked when the news flashed on my screen as the explosions occurred.  Such tragic news is heart wrenching but  I believe we must counter this tug of war between good and evil by stepping up the good we do in our daily lives through acts of kindness towards one another.  Any bad news should serve as calls to action.  I have a quote by Annie Lennox taped on my phone:  “Ask yourself:  Have you been kind today?  Make kindness  your daily modus operandi and change your world.”

April 15^th, 1452 – Leonardo da Vinci was born.

April 15^th 1726 – Sir Isaac Newton tells a  biographer that an apple falling in his garden inspired his law of universal gravitation.

April 15^th, 1912 –The Titanic sank.

April 15^th, 1955 – Ray Kroc opened the firs McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, Il.

Photos of the day – April  15th, 2013

A boy is smeared with vermillion powder while celebrating ‘Sindoor Jatra’ festival at Thimi, near Kathmandu. The festival marks the Nepalese New Year and the beginning of spring season in Nepal. Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

A visitor looks at a sculpture entitled ‘Couple Under an Umbrella, 2013’ by Australian artist Ron Mueck during the press day for his exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris. Charles Platiau/Reuters

Market Closes for April 15th, 2013

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	14599.20	-265.86    -1.79%
S&P 500	1552.36	-36.49    -2.30%
NASDAQ	3216.490	-78.456    -2.38%
TSX	12004.88	-332.71
		-2.70%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	13275.66	-209.48
		-1.55%
HANG  SENG	21772.67	-316.38
		-1.43%
SENSEX	18357.80	+115.24
		+0.63%
FTSE 100	6343.60	-40.79
		-0.64%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.711	1.738
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.359	2.389
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.6798	1.7208
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.8590	2.9177

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.97719	0.98670
US   $	1.02334	1.01348
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.33566	0.74869
US  $	1.30520	0.76617

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1352.65	1483.00
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	88.71	91.29
BRENT	99.71	103.13

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

April 15 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell the most in nine months after an unexpected slowdown in China’s economic growth spurred the biggest drop in four years for commodity shares.

Barrick Gold Corp., the largest producer of gold, tumbled 12 percent, the most since February 2009, as the metal sank below $1,400 an ounce. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. lost 4.6 percent as crude slipped to its lowest this year. Suncor Energy Inc. fell 4.6 percent after agreeing to sell natural gas fields for C$1 billion. Raw-material producers in the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index dropped 7.6 percent, the most since December 2008.

The S&P/TSX fell 332.71 points, or 2.7 percent, to 12,004.88 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, the largest loss since June. The benchmark Canadian equity gauge is down 3.5 percent this year.

Trading volume was 54 percent higher than the 30-day average.

“China’s definitely not growing at 12 percent anymore, so that’s why you’re seeing all the commodities move off,” said Paul Harris, a fund manager with Avenue Investment Management in Toronto. He helps manage about C$300 million ($294 million).

Speculation the Federal Reserve will pull back on stimulus has “caused a huge fall in the price of gold. There are so many people in there for speculative reasons, but now they’re getting out because it’s collapsing.”

China’s economy unexpectedly lost momentum in the first quarter, expanding 7.7 percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said. That compares with the 8 percent median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey and 7.9 percent in the prior quarter.

Some policy makers among the U.S. Fed favor pulling back this year on $85 billion in monthly debt-buying as the U.S. economy recovers and equities reached a record.

The S&P GSCI index of 24 raw materials plunged as much as 2.6 percent to its lowest level since July 10. Shares of energy producers retreated 3.1 percent, reaching the lowest level since November.

Barrick Gold plunged 12 percent to C$20.30, its lowest close in more than 12 years. Goldcorp declined 5.6 percent to C$28.38, the lowest price since December 2008.

Gold futures for June delivery plummeted the most since 1980, falling 9.3 percent to settle at $1,361.10 an ounce. The gold price has slumped more than 20 percent since the record close in August 2011, meeting the common definition of a bear market and threatening to snap 12 straight years of gains.

Detour Gold Corp. slumped 25 percent to C$11.05 and Osisko Mining Corp. fell 21 percent to C$4.04. The S&P/TSX Gold Index dropped to a four-year low. All 30 stocks in the index declined.

Silver Wheaton Corp. lost 8.7 percent to C$24.48 as silver for May delivery dropped 11 percent to settle at $23.361 an ounce in New York, the lowest since September 2011.

Teck Resources Ltd., Canada’s largest diversified miner, sank 7.1 percent to $26.15. First Quantum Minerals Ltd. lost 13 percent to C$15.58 as copper for May delivery slid 2.3 percent to settle at $3.273 a pound in New York.

Canadian Natural Resources dropped 4.6 percent to C$29.85 and Cenovus Energy Inc. retreated 4.6 percent to C$29.04. Crude for May delivery slipped 2.8 percent to settle at $88.71 a barrel in New York, the lowest since December.

Suncor, Canada’s largest energy producer, dropped 4.6 percent to C$27.50. The company agreed to sell its natural gas fields in southern and central Alberta to Centrica Plc, the largest U.K. household energy company, and state-run Qatar Petroleum for C$1 billion. The assets produce about 250 million cubic feet of gas a day this year, Suncor said in a statement.

US

By Inyoung Hwang

April 15 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks tumbled, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its biggest drop of the year as a gauge of market volatility jumped the most in 20 months, after China’s economy grew at a slower pace than forecast.

Energy and raw-material companies fell the most among 10 S&P 500 groups. Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. both lost 2.8 percent. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., the largest publicly traded copper producer, and Newmont Mining Corp. tumbled more than 6.7 percent as commodities slumped to a nine- month low. Sprint Nextel Corp. surged 14 percent after Dish Network Corp. offered to buy the company for $25.5 billion.

The S&P 500 dropped 2.3 percent to 1,552.36 in New York, the biggest decline since Nov. 7. The index has lost 2.6 percent since April 11. The Dow Jones Industrial Average erased 265.86 points, or 1.8 percent, to 14,599.20. The Russell 2000 Index, which is made up of smaller companies, retreated 3.8 percent, the most in 17 months. About 8.5 billion shares traded on U.S. exchanges today, 33 percent higher than the three-month average.

“The weaker-than-expected China data threw some cold water on the global growth story,” Walter ‘Bucky’ Hellwig, who helps manage $17 billion of assets at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama, said by telephone. “There’s been a lot of concern of what the growth trajectory of China would be. Most market watchers have dismissed a hard landing scenario but if the growth rate is below what the current expectations are, that’s a drag on global growth.”

Stocks extended losses as explosions rocked the finish line area of the Boston Marathon, while almost all of the decline came before the incident.

The S&P GSCI gauge of 24 commodities sank to the lowest level since July. Gold tumbled the most since 1980 and silver plunged 11 percent. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, which measures the cost of using options as insurance against declines in the S&P 500, soared 43 percent for the biggest increase since August 2011, to 17.27. The gauge, known as the VIX, pared its loss for the year to 4.2 percent after reaching its lowest level since February 2007 last month.

China’s gross domestic product rose 7.7 in the first quarter from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said in Beijing today. That compared with the 8 percent median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists and 7.9 percent growth in the fourth quarter. Separate reports showed March industrial production rose less than estimated while retail- sales growth matched forecasts.

Global equities also fell today as European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said monetary policy can’t address the root causes of the sovereign debt crisis and it’s up to governments to enact structural reforms.

In the U.S., data today showed manufacturing in the New York region expanded less than projected in April as orders cooled and sales stagnated. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s general economic index dropped to 3.1 this month from 9.2 in March. The median projection of 47 economists surveyed by Bloomberg was 7.

U.S. equities rallied last week, sending the S&P 500 up 2.3 percent, amid optimism that global stimulus efforts and corporate earnings growth will continue to power the world’s largest economy.

Profits at S&P 500 companies are forecast to drop 1.4 percent in the first three months of the year, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. That would mark the first year-over-year decrease since 2009.

“A lot of companies have tried to talk down expectations,” Joseph Veranth, chief investment officer at Dana Investment Advisors in Brookfield, Wisconsin, said by phone. The firm manages $3.9 billion. “The bar has been set a little lower and that’s going to help in terms of companies at least beating lowered expectations.”

Investors sold shares of corporations most tied to economic growth today. The Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index of 30 U.S. equities and the 20-stock Dow Jones Transportation Index lost at least 3.8 percent for the biggest declines since November 2011.

Lenders also declined, sending the KBW Bank Index down 2.3 percent.

Raw-material and energy companies lost more than 3.9 percent among S&P 500 groups. Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest maker of construction equipment, tumbled 3.3 percent to $82.27 for the biggest decline in the Dow. Alcoa Inc., the largest U.S. aluminum producer, slid 2.2 percent to $8.04.

Chevron erased 2.8 percent to $116.57, while Exxon Mobil lost 2.8 percent to $86.49. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude fell to the lowest level this year amid increased concern that demand from China, the world’s second-biggest oil-consuming country, will slow.

Freeport dropped 8.3 percent to $29.27 as Citigroup downgraded the shares to sell from neutral and cut its price estimate by 29 percent to $25. Copper reached the lowest level since October 2011 in New York. Newmont Mining, the largest U.S. gold producer, retreated 6.7 percent to $33.92 as precious metals tumbled. Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., the largest U.S. iron-ore miner, also sank, losing 8.3 percent to $17.61.

All 11 stocks in the S&P Supercomposite Homebuilding Index fell today, as the gauge tumbled 6.3 percent, the most since Feb. 20. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo index of builder confidence showed an unexpected drop in April for a third month, restrained by rising costs for materials and financing restrictions.

Ryland Group Inc. decreased 6.7 percent to $37.01. M/I Homes Inc. dropped 7 percent to $21.40.

Citigroup Inc. increased 0.2 percent to $44.87, paring an earlier rally of as much as 3.4 percent. The third-biggest U.S. bank said first-quarter profit rose 30 percent as revenue from fixed-income trading and investment banking exceeded analysts’ estimates. Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat, 52, who oversaw his first full quarter since replacing Vikram Pandit in October, is firing workers and closing branches as he seeks to make Citigroup more efficient.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. are also scheduled to post results this week.

Sprint jumped 14 percent to $7.06 after Dish, Charlie Ergen’s satellite-TV company, challenged a bid by Japan’s Softbank Corp. for the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier.

Sprint shareholders would receive $7 a share, consisting of $4.76 in cash and stock representing about 32 percent of the combined company. That means the offer is $17.3 billion cash and $8.2 billion stock. Dish fell 2.3 percent to $36.77.

Life Technologies Corp. rallied 7.5 percent to $73.11.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the second-biggest maker of life- sciences equipment by market value, agreed to buy Life Technologies for about $13.6 billion in an all-cash deal. Life Technologies makes laboratory equipment that help blueprint DNA.

Thermo slipped 1.3 percent to $78.58.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

 

Amidst this chaos there is harmony, throughout these discordant sounds there is a note of concord;

and he who is prepared to listen to it will catch the tone.

Swami Vivekananda, 1863-1902

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love

with your work.

-Sister Mary Lauretta

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

There is a wonderful special exhibition on at the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.  The fabulous Mauritshuis  museum in the Hague has selected several paintings to go on tour while the museum is under renovation.   The highlight of the exhibition is Vermeer’s The Girl with The Pearl Earring, although the whole collection which includes Rembrandts as well as many other Dutch masters, is well worth the effort to make the trip before this special exhibit ends on June 2^nd, 2013.  We went on the long Easter weekend and the non-stop flight from Victoria had us on the ground in under two hours.  If you are interested, it is best to buy the tickets on-line before you go.  You can do so at https://tickets.famsf.org/public/.  If you go, spring for the audio tour as there is meaningful commentary by one of the curators at the Mauritshuis.  Check out A 16 restaurant in Pacific Heights.  They feature a local area farmer’s product every Sunday.  The Sunday we were there, a duck farmer from Sonoma was being featured and the special menu of the day offered many different duck dishes, including the best duck confit I’ve ever tasted.  Pacific Heights is a really interesting neighborhood to meander around – the architecture is stunning!

Photos of the day – April  12th, 2013

Staff uniforms are displayed for auction at the Hotel de Crillon in Paris. The Hotel de Crillon, one of the oldest luxury hotels in Paris, hushed after the departure of its last guests in March, has been transformed into a buyer’s wonderland as it closes its doors for a two-year renovation. Charles Platiau/Reuters

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje (not pictured) of Canada perform during the ice dance free dance at the ISU World Team Trophy in Figure Skating in Tokyo. Yuya Shino/Reuters.

Market Closes for April 12th, 2013

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	14865.06	-0.08    —
S&P 500	1588.85	-4.52    -0.28%
NASDAQ	3294.945	-5.210    -0.16%
TSX	12337.59	-143.78
		-1.15%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	13485.14	-64.02
		-0.47%
HANG  SENG	22089.05	-12.22
		-0.06%
SENSEX	18242.56	-299.64
		-1.62%
FTSE 100	6384.39	-31.75
		-0.49%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.738	1.783
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.389	2.431
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.7208	1.7887
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.9177	2.9952

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98670	0.98979
US   $	1.01348	1.01031
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.32888	0.75252
US  $	1.31120	0.76266

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1483.00	1561.85
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	91.29	93.51
BRENT	103.13	104.83

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

April 12 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks tumbled, giving the benchmark index its second-biggest decline of the year, after energy and raw-material shares dropped as commodity prices plunged amid an unexpected slump in U.S. retail sales.

The Standard & Poor’s/GSCI Index of commodities tumbled 1.3 percent to the lowest level since July. Barrick Gold Corp. and Yamana Gold Inc. slumped at least 6.8 percent as the price of gold dipped below $1,500 an ounce, entering a bear market. First Majestic Silver Corp. and Silver Standard Resources Inc. lost as much as 4.1 percent as silver plunged. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. fell 3.7 percent after crude declined to its lowest in a month.

The S&P/TSX Composite Index fell 143.78 points, or 1.2 percent, to 12,337.59 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The gauge’s biggest decline this year was on April 3, when it tumbled 2.1 percent amid another commodities slump. The benchmark Canadian equity index is down 0.8 percent for 2013, erasing earlier gains.

Trading volume was 3.5 percent higher than the 30-day average.

“It’s pretty ugly here and the commodities are again the main culprit,” said John Kinsey, fund manager with Caldwell Securities Ltd. in Toronto. His firm manages about C$1 billion ($987 million). “Gold is taking a thrashing and energy stocks are a problem as well. Financials are also reacting to the U.S. numbers. It’s not quite as bad as it used to be, when the U.S. sneezed and we’d catch a cold, but the U.S. is our largest trading partner.”

U.S. retail sales fell 0.4 percent in March, the most in nine months, Commerce Department figures showed. The median forecast of 85 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for an unchanged reading in March. Department stores and electronics dealers were among the weakest showings.

Raw-materials stocks declined the most in the S&P/TSX, losing 4.2 percent as a group to the lowest level since June 2009.

Barrick, the world’s largest producer of gold, plunged 8.2 percent to C$22.94, its lowest close since October 2008. Yamana Gold lost 6.8 percent to C$13.27, for the biggest decline since September 2011.

Gold for June delivery tumbled 4.1 percent to settle at $1,501.40 an ounce in New York, entering what many consider a bear market after slumping more than 20 percent from an August 2011 record. The price was down 5.3 percent to $1,482.70 in electronic trading as of 5 p.m. in Toronto.

The S&P/TSX Gold index sank 6.2 percent to its lowest level since November 2008. All 30 members declined.

First Majestic Silver fell 4.1 percent to C$14.22 and Silver Standard Resources lost 6 percent to C$8.69 as silver futures for May delivery dropped 4.9 percent to $26.331 an ounce, the biggest loss since June.

Canadian Natural Resources retreated 3.7 percent to C$31.28 and Suncor Energy Inc. decreased 1.5 percent to C$28.82. Crude for May delivery declined 2.4 percent to settle at $91.29, the lowest in a month. Cyprus was said to seek an increase in the 10 billion euros ($13 billion) pledged by the euro area, raising concern the European debt crisis will worsen.

Dollarama Inc. surged 5.6 percent to C$68.23, its highest level since an initial public offering in October 2009. The discount retailer reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of C$1.06 a share, compared with analysts’ estimates of C$1.02. The company also raised its quarterly dividend 27 percent to 14 Canadian cents a share from 11 cents.

US

By Lu Wang and Lindsey Rupp

April 12 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell, dragging the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index down from a record, as government data showed retail sales unexpectedly fell in March, commodities plunged and a gauge of consumer sentiment slipped.

Raw-material and energy shares lost the most among 24 groups in the S&P 500. Newmont Mining Corp. slumped 5.9 percent as gold dropped to its lowest since July 2011. DuPont Co. and Alcoa Inc. slid at least 0.9 percent. Banks retreated 1.1 percent as Wells Fargo & Co. reported a drop in revenue and M&T Bank Corp. delayed its planned purchase of Hudson City Bancorp.

The S&P 500 fell 0.3 percent to 1,588.85 at 4 p.m. in New York, paring an earlier decline of as much as 0.8 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped less than 1 point to 14,865.06, erasing a drop of 0.5 percent earlier in the day. The benchmark indexes closed at all-time highs yesterday. About 5.9 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, 5.3 percent lower than the three-month average.

“We’ve seen this market go up quite a bit,” Terry L.

Morris, who helps oversee about $2.6 billion at Wyomissing, Pennsylvania-based National Penn Investors Trust Co., said by phone. “A lot of investors are cautious at this point and are quick to sell on any kind of signs of a slowdown.”

The 0.4 percent decrease in U.S. retail sales, the biggest since June, followed a 1 percent gain in February, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 85 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for an unchanged reading in March. Department stores and electronics dealers were among the weakest showings.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary sentiment index for April fell to 72.3 from 78.6 in March. No change was projected for this month’s reading compared with March, according to the median estimate of 69 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Companies in the U.S. added to inventories in February at the slowest pace in eight months, a separate Commerce Department report showed, putting them in a better position to deal with a subsequent slowdown in demand.

Euro-area finance ministers agreed in principle at a meeting in Dublin today to extend the maturities on rescue loans to Ireland and Portugal by seven years. Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades will seek an increase to the nation’s 10 billion- euro ($13 billion) bailout from the European Union, according to a government official, who asked not to be identified.

The bull market in U.S. equities entered its fifth year last month. The S&P 500 has surged 135 percent from a 12-year low in 2009 as companies reported better-than-estimated earnings and the Federal Reserve embarked on three rounds of bond purchases to stimulate the economy. The benchmark gauge added 2.3 percent this week amid optimism over central-bank stimulus and corporate earnings.

Investors will be watching closely as the number of earnings reports increases in the weeks ahead, helping to gauge the health of the economy. Profits at S&P 500 companies dropped 1.4 percent in the first three months of the year, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. That would mark the first year-over-year decrease since 2009.

Seventy percent of the 30 companies that have reported results so far beat estimates. Bank of America Corp., Coca-Cola Co., Google Inc. and General Electric Co. are among companies that will release earnings next week.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, which measures the cost of using options as insurance against declines in the S&P 500, fell 1.5 percent to 12.06 today. The gauge, known as the VIX, is down 33 percent this year and reached its lowest level since February 2007 last week.

Fourteen out of the 24 industries in the S&P 500 declined today. A gauge of stocks closely tied to economic growth retreated, as the Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index fell 0.5 percent to snap a four-day rally. DuPont slipped 0.9 percent to $49.82 and Alcoa lost 1.2 percent to $8.22.

The KBW Bank Index slumped 1.1 percent, even as Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase & Co. posted results that topped analyst estimates.

Wells Fargo dropped 0.8 percent to $37.21. The largest U.S. home lender posted a 22 percent rise in first-quarter profit that beat forecasts as the bank curbed expense growth. Revenue, mortgage banking income and lending margins fell.

JPMorgan slipped 0.6 percent to $49.01. First-quarter profit rose 33 percent as improving consumer credit quality allowed the bank to cut loan-loss reserves by $1.2 billion.

While mortgage volume jumped 37 percent, mortgage-banking net income dropped 31 percent. The largest U.S. bank by assets said 2013 net interest income will be 1 percent lower than the year- earlier period.

“They beat, but it’s kind of a low-quality beat,” David Chalupnik, head of equities at Nuveen Asset Management in Minneapolis, said in a phone interview. His firm manages $120 billion. “What these companies need to see is better economic growth and with that an increase in longer term interest rates. We’re not seeing that yet.”

M&T Bank fell 4.5 percent to $100.24, the lowest close of the year. The lender said a Federal Reserve review of its compliance with money-laundering rules has delayed its planned purchase of Hudson City. Shares of Hudson City dropped 5.5 percent to $8.29.

Energy and raw-materials companies in the S&P 500 tumbled more than 1.3 percent as the S&P/GSCI index of commodities fell to the lowest level since July.

Gold for June delivery tumbled 4.1 percent to settle at $1,501.40 an ounce in New York, entering what many consider a bear market after slumping more than 20 percent from an August 2011 record. The price declined 5.3 percent to $1,481.70 in electronic trading at 4:55 p.m. Crude oil lost 2.4 percent to settle at $91.29 a barrel, the lowest in a month.

Newfield Exploration Co. fell 4.1 percent to $21.70.

Newmont Mining dropped 5.9 percent to $36.37, its lowest close in four years. Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., the largest U.S. iron-ore miner, declined 3.6 percent to $19.20.

Home Depot Inc., the largest home-improvement retailer, jumped 2.4 percent to $73.62 for the biggest gain in the Dow. An analyst with Jefferies LLC increased his recommendation on the stock to buy from hold.

Biogen Idec Inc. advanced 3.4 percent to $207.01. The biotechnology company was boosted to buy from neutral at Bank of America Corp.

Ashland Inc. climbed 9.9 percent to $86.66, an all-time high. Activist investor Jana Partners LLC acquired a 7.4 percent stake in the biggest producer of specialty papermaking chemicals and has spoken to management.

 

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

 

Be  magnificent!

 

Within, everything is connected.

This is because an action in one part produces a similar reaction elsewhere

and thus a response.

Swami Prajnanpad, 1891-1974

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

A well-written life is almost as rare

as a well spent one.

-Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

On this day, 148 years ago, April 11^th, 1864, Abraham Lincoln made his last public speech, where he discussed the status of the Confederate states as well as his plan for restoring them to their place in the Union.

We watched the movie, Lincoln, on the weekend.  Daniel Day Lewis certainly deserved his best actor award.

Hard to believe that also on this day not so long ago,  April 11^th, 1956, white audience members attacked Nat King Cole on the stage of a Birmingham, Alabama, theatre.

Starting tonight, art show meets picture show:  Exhibition: Great Art on Screen is a behind-the-scenes tour of the Manet show now at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.  Hosted by art historian Tim Marlow, “Manet: Portraying Life” includes interviews and background information that bring this French artist and his work to life.  Later on June 27^th, the focus will be on Edvard Munch and on October 10^th, Johannes Vermeer.  To find a participating theater, go to fathomevents.com.

Photos of the day – April  11th, 2013

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu (c.) dances with the Cape Town Opera Ensemble at the Templeton Prize celebration at St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. South African anti-apartheid campaigner Tutu has won the 2013 Templeton Prize worth $1.7 million for helping inspire people around the world by promoting forgiveness and justice, organisers said. Ilan Godfrey/Templeton Prize/Reuters

A woman walks two dogs around Lake Harriet after more than six inches of snow fell overnight in Minneapolis, Minn. Eric Miller/Reuters

Market Closes for April 11th, 2013

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	14865.14	+62.90    +0.42%
S&P 500	1593.37	+5.64    +0.36%
NASDAQ	3300.156	+2.902    +0.09%
TSX	12481.37	-53.54
		-0.43%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	13549.16	+261.03
		+1.96
HANG  SENG	22101.27	+66.71
		+0.30%
SENSEX	18542.20	+127.75
		+0.69%
FTSE 100	6416.14	+28.77
		+0.45%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.783	1.806
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.431	2.442
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.7887	1.8034
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.9952	3.0030

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98979	0.98546
US   $	1.01031	1.01475
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.32459	0.75495
US  $	1.31107	0.76274

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1561.85	1558.75
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	93.51	94.64
BRENT	104.83	106.15

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

April 11 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell, snapping a three-day rally, as commodity producers slumped and BlackBerry plunged on a report of sluggish sales of its new phones.

Suncor Energy Inc. and Cenovus Energy Inc. dropped more than 1.8 percent after oil slid for the first time in four days.

Banro Corp. fell to its lowest level in more than four years.

BlackBerry tumbled 8.5 percent after a research firm said U.S. sales of the company’s Z10 smartphone “started poorly.” Corus Entertainment Inc., a Toronto-based media company, dropped 4 percent after reporting disappointing results.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index fell 53.54 points, or 0.4 percent, to 12,481.37 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The benchmark Canadian equity gauge is up 1.2 percent this week, erasing a loss for the year. Trading volume was 19 percent below the 30-day average.

“The market is telling us crude isn’t staying at these levels,” Kash Pashootan, a fund manager with First Avenue Advisory of Raymond James Ltd., said from Ottawa. His firm oversees about C$125 million ($124 million). “There just isn’t the same enthusiasm for the Canadian market that there is for the U.S. market.”

U.S. stocks extended its rally to a fourth day as retailers gained after reporting improving sales and jobless claims dropped more than forecast. The S&P 500 has surged 12 percent this year. The S&P/TSX is up 0.4 percent for 2013.

Oil for May delivery fell 1.2 percent to settle at $93.51 a barrel in New York as the International Energy Agency lowered its forecasts for demand while U.S. inventories climbed to a 22- year high. Crude is Canada’s biggest export.

Suncor Energy, the nation’s largest oil producer, declined 2.9 percent to C$29.25 and Cenovus Energy fell 1.8 percent to C$30.94.

Banro, a gold miner, fell 4.3 percent to C$1.35, its lowest since March 2009. Spot prices for gold have declined 6.8 percent in 2013, on track to snap a 12-year streak of gains.

Financial stocks fell, losing 0.3 percent as a group. Bank of Nova Scotia dropped 0.8 percent to C$57.90. Manulife Financial Corp. declined 1.6 percent to C$14.42 after the nation’s biggest insurer jumped the most in two months yesterday following an agreement to pay the second-highest price on record for a whole Hong Kong office tower.

Eight of 10 groups in the S&P/TSX fell, led by a 2.1 percent drop in technology shares.

BlackBerry, formerly known as Research In Motion Ltd., slumped 8.5 percent, the biggest drop in the benchmark index, to C$13.66. Joseph Fersedi, an analyst with ITG Investment Research, said in a note today U.S. sales of the Z10 smartphone started poorly and “weakened significantly as the days passed” citing information from independent dealers.

Another research firm, Detwiler Fenton & Co., said customers are returning their Z10s because they find the interface unintuitive. BlackBerry has pinned turnaround hopes on the new phones, which it began selling in the U.S. in March.

Corus Entertainment plunged 4 percent to C$24.60, headed for its lowest close in almost three months. The Toronto-based company’s second-quarter adjusted earnings of 29 Canadian cents a share fell short of the 36 cents forecast by analysts.

US

By Lu Wang and Lindsey Rupp

April 11 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks advanced, extending a rally in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to a fourth day, as retailers climbed amid rising March sales and jobless claims dropped more than estimated.

Ross Stores Inc. advanced 5.9 percent as March sales beat forecasts. Rite Aid Corp. reached the highest closing level in more than three years after the drugstore chain reported its first annual profit since 2007. Technology shares slumped as personal-computer shipments in the first quarter plunged the most since at least 1994 and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. downgraded Microsoft Corp. shares. Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard Co. lost more than 4.4 percent.

The S&P 500 advanced 0.4 percent to 1,593.37 at 4 p.m. in New York, setting a high for the second straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 62.90 points, or 0.4 percent, to 14,865.14, its third-straight record. About 6.2 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, in line with the three- month average.

“What’s going on right now is a positive confidence loop,” Cameron Hinds, regional chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank, which has about $170 billion under management, said in a phone interview. “It’s almost like the market’s going up because of a self-fulfillment circle, and it’s almost like we need a new negative to keep the market from going up. And I don’t know what that is.”

The S&P 500 surged 1.2 percent yesterday, the most since February, as China’s imports grew, Japan reiterated its stimulus plans and investors speculated earnings will beat estimates. The benchmark index has rallied 2.6 percent so far this week. It has more than doubled from its 12-year low in March 2009, helped by the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented bond purchases and three straight years of profit growth.

Individual investors, who pulled $307 billion out of U.S. equity mutual funds in the last four years, are not convinced the market will continue to rise. A weekly survey from the American Association of Individual Investors released today showed 54.5 percent of respondents expected the market to fall over the next six months, the largest portion since July 2010.

“The Federal Reserve and central banks around the globe are interested in boosting asset prices,” Bill Nasgovitz, founder of Milwaukee-based Heartland Advisors Inc., which oversees $5.7 billion, said in a phone interview. It is possible “individuals and pension funds more or less throw in the towel and say, ‘Gee, we’ve got to increase our equity ownership.’”

Jobless claims decreased by 42,000 to 346,000 in the week ended April 6, from a revised 388,000, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 49 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a drop to 360,000. Holidays such as Easter that fall on different weeks from year to year make it difficult to smooth out swings in the data, leading to increased volatility, the Labor Department said.

The European Central Bank said in its monthly bulletin that it will look for signs in economic data that inflation could slow more than anticipated. President Mario Draghi said last week that officials are “looking at various instruments” to support the recovery.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. are among companies scheduled to report earnings tomorrow. Analysts project profits at S&P 500 companies fell 1.8 percent in the latest quarter, the first year-over-year drop since 2009, estimates compiled by Bloomberg show.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, which measures the cost of using options as insurance against declines in the S&P 500, fell for a fourth day, losing 1 percent to 12.24 today. The gauge, known as the VIX, is down 32 percent this year and reached its lowest level since February 2007 in March.

Nineteen out of 24 industries in the S&P 500 gained.

Retailers jumped the second most, rallying 1.2 percent.

Ross Stores rose 5.9 percent to $63.80 The operator of apparel and home accessories stores said sales at stores open at least one year climbed 2 percent in March. Analysts forecast a drop of 1.3 percent.

L Brands Inc., the owner of the Victoria’s Secret chain, added 4.3 percent to $50.25. The company, which changed its name from Limited Brands, said March same-store sales gained 3 percent, beating estimates of a 0.4 percent advance.

J.C. Penney Co. climbed 5.5 percent to $14.86. Activist investor William Ackman said today that the company will reverse ousted-Chief Executive Officer Ron Johnson’s strategy of reducing discounts and put coupon advertising in newspapers again to try to boost sales. Johnson was replaced by Myron E.

Ullman III on April 8.

Rite Aid jumped 18 percent to $2.12, the highest level since September 2009. The company’s focus on wellness programs led to net income of 12 cents a share in the fiscal year ended March 2. About 17 percent of the chain’s 4,623 locations have been turned into wellness centers that feature expanded pharmacy services and health-focused products.

The S&P Information Technology Index dropped 0.5 percent, after the biggest rally since Jan. 2 yesterday. Personal- computer shipments plummeted in every region of the world in the first quarter as buyers opted for smartphones and tablet computers and Microsoft’s newest operating system met with weak demand. Global PC unit shipments fell 14 percent, a bigger drop than the 7.7 percent decline market research firm IDC had forecast.

Microsoft fell 4.4 percent to $28.94. Goldman Sachs cut the software maker to sell from neutral, citing worsening trends for personal computers and the company’s lack of success in tablets and smartphones.

Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest personal-computer maker, slid 6.5 percent to $20.88. Chipmaker Intel Corp. retreated 2 percent to $21.83.

Fortinet Inc. plunged 13 percent to $18.99 after the provider of computer-network security reported preliminary first-quarter sales and profit that missed some analyst estimates. A weak economic environment in Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, as well as inventory shortages contributed to the results, while demand was strong in Asia and among U.S. companies, Chief Executive Officer Ken Xie said.

Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc. surged 64 percent to $13.10, the highest in five years, after saying U.S. regulators will review its lead drug sooner than anticipated. The Food and Drug Administration agreed Acadia won’t have to conduct a final-phase trial for its drug to treat Parkinson’s disease psychosis, clearing the way for the biotechnology company to apply for an FDA review by the end of 2014.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

 

Truth is that which one wishes in its totality.  Have you reached it?

Krishnamurti, 1895-1986

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

We don’t see things as they are,

we see things as we are.

-Anaïs Nin, 1903-1977

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

New Moon in Aries today.

FLYING MACHINES

A German chocolate company created futuristic postcards in 1900 of what it imagined the world would look like in 2000.  The images are amusing and oddly prescient, showing innovations that are fairly true to life today, such as moving walkways, snow-creating machines, and commonplace air travel.  Check them out at http://bit.ly/futurepostcards. -from CSM, April ,2013.

We’ll have to wait and see if this comes true:  Computer login via thoughts?  Computer passwords may soon be a thing of the past, replaced by “passthoughts” that users only have to think to have applied.  Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, say they’re studying the feasibility of brainwave-based computer authentication as a substitute for passwords, reports United Press International.  Recent developments in biosensor technologies could make using electronencephalograms, or brainwave measurements. Possible.  New consumer-grade headsets using just a single dry-contact sensor resting against the user’s forehead could provide an

EEG  signal from the brain’s left frontal lobe.  Experiments show the principle of passthoughts is workable, the researchers said. –from The G & M, 04/10/13.

Photos of the day – April  10th, 2013

Raindrops sit on a closed daffodil blossom in Hamburg, Germany. Bodo Marks/AP

People watch a furniture creation by ‘Mosa’ factory on display at the Milan Design Fair, in Milan, Italy. The Milan furniture and design week fair is a six-day event which ends next Sunday. Antonio Calanni/AP

Market Closes for April 10th, 2013

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	14802.24	+128.78    +0.88%
S&P 500	1587.73	+19.12    +1.22%
NASDAQ	3297.253	+59.395    +1.83%
TSX	12534.91	+50.86
		+0.41%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	13288.13	+95.78
		+0.73
HANG  SENG	22034.56	+164.22
		+0.75%
SENSEX	18414.45	+187.97
		+1.03%
FTSE 100	6387.37	+74.16
		+1.17%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.806	1.774
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.442	2.395
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.8034	1.7502
U.S.   30 Year Bond	3.0030	2.9377

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98546	0.98394
US   $	1.01475	1.01633
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.32525	0.75457
US  $	1.30599	0.76572

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1558.75	1585.47
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	94.64	94.20
BRENT	106.15	106.43

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Nikolaj Gammeltoft and Eric Lam

April 10 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rose for a third day, the longest winning streak in a month, as energy producers and banks advanced amid higher-than-forecast Chinese imports.

Royal Bank of Canada, the nation’s largest lender, and Bank of Nova Scotia added more than 1.8 percent. Arc Resources Ltd. and Husky Energy Inc. gained at least 2.7 percent as natural gas surged and oil erased an earlier loss. Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest producer of the metal, plunged to a four-year low after a report that a Chilean court ordered work halted at the company’s Pascua Lama mine.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index climbed 50.86 points, or 0.4 percent, to 12,534.91 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The benchmark equity gauge has added 1.7 percent this week, erasing its loss for the year. Trading volume was in line with the 30- day average.

“China imports were up, it’s getting people excited again for the commodity side,” said Irwin Michael, portfolio manager with ABC Funds in Toronto. His firm oversees about C$800 million ($788 million). “With the banks, people are coming to terms with the fact the Canadian housing market is not going to crash.”

Imports to China, Canada’s second-largest trading partner behind the U.S., rose by an above-forecast 14 percent in March, the nation’s customs administration said today in Beijing.

Data yesterday showed Canadian housing starts unexpectedly increased for a second month in March and building permits rose in February, evidence that low borrowing costs are supporting construction.

Oil prices rose 0.5 percent to $94.64, the highest settlement since April 2, erasing losses of as much as 0.9 percent earlier in the day. The Chinese import data, Japanese stimulus plans and speculation that corporate earnings will beat estimates sent U.S. equities to record highs, bolstering speculation that fuel consumption will climb.

Natural gas futures rose 1.7 percent to settle at $4.085 per million British thermal units, the first gain in three days, following forecasts for below-normal temperatures through mid- April in the western U.S. Arc Resources added 3.4 percent to C$27.48, the highest in more than two years. Husky Energy advanced 2.7 percent to C$29.92.

Bank shares rallied, with the S&P/TSX Financials index advancing 1.3 percent, the most in eight months. Royal Bank gained 2 percent to C$61.38. Scotiabank rose 1.8 percent, the biggest jump in almost 10 months, to C$58.39.

Bombardier Inc., based in Montreal, climbed 0.5 percent to C$4.09 after announcing it signed a deal to sell as many as 30 of its new CSeries jets to Porter Airlines. The full order would be worth as much as $2.08 billion based on list prices, Bombardier said.

Raw materials producers were the only group among 10 in the index to decline, falling 2.9 percent today to extend the S&P/TSX Materials Index’s loss this year to 16 percent.

Gold producers slumped 4.9 percent as a group, the lowest close since December 2008. The metal’s price slid the most in five months, dropping 1.8 percent to settle at $1,558.80 an ounce.

Barrick tumbled 8.6 percent to C$24.81, the lowest level since October 2008. Chile’s Radio Cooperativa reported an appeals court accepted an injunction filed by indigenous communities against the Pascua-Lama gold project. The company said in an e-mail it has not been notified by the court and had no comment.

Rio Alto Mining Ltd., which is developing the La Arena gold and copper project in Peru, dropped 2.6 percent to C$4.51 after suspending operations at the mine late yesterday when a worker died in an accident while digging a trench. The company has not said when operations will resume.

US

By Lu Wang

April 10 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rallied, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its highest level ever, as China’s imports grew, Japan reiterated its stimulus plans and investors speculated earnings will beat estimates.

All 10 industries in the S&P 500 advanced, with technology and health-care companies rallying more than 1.7 percent. The Nasdaq Composite Index, which counts on computer and software makers for about half its weighting, surged 1.8 percent. Intel Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. jumped at least 2.3 percent as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. predicted a rebound in industry sales. Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. added more than 1.2 percent, pacing gains among financial shares.

The S&P 500 rose 1.2 percent to 1,587.73 at 4 p.m. in New York, as minutes of the latest Federal Reserve meeting showed officials debated when to curtail stimulus efforts. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 128.78 points, or 0.9 percent, to a record 14,802.24. About 6.2 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, in line with the three-month average.

“A lot of it is sentiment,” Rex Macey, who oversees $20 billion as chief investment officer at Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors in Atlanta, said by telephone. “People who were not in the market and people had been nervous are starting to feel as if it’s safe to go back in the water. They don’t feel there is a recession around the corner,” he said. “The market is expecting some bad reports for earnings. We think there might be some surprise to the upside.”

Imports to China rose 14.1 percent in March from the year earlier, leaving the nation with an unexpected trade deficit. In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said “bold monetary easing” will reverse persistent deflation in his nation. Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the central bank will take all steps necessary to meet a 2 percent inflation target even as he indicated policy adjustments are unlikely every month. The European Central Bank will keep rates low and continue injecting liquidity into the banking system, Governing Council member Christian Noyer said on Europe 1 radio.

The S&P 500 jumped the most since Feb. 27 today, topping a record intraday high of 1,576.09 set in October 2007, and is up 2.2 percent so far this week for its best three-day rally since the beginning of January. The index has more than doubled from its 12-year low in March 2009, helped by the Fed’s unprecedented bond purchases and three straight years of profit growth.

Several Fed officials said the central bank should taper its bond-buying program later this year and stop it by the end of 2013 if labor market conditions improve, according to minutes from the March meeting released today. Fed Chairman Ben S.

Bernanke said on April 8 that economic conditions were far from where he would like them to be.

“Bernanke has made it very clear as of late that while the economy is recovering quite well from recent lows, it is still very far from where he would like it,” Ryan Larson, the Chicago-based head of U.S. equity trading at RBC Global Asset Management (U.S.) Inc., said by e-mail. “I think that is trumping the fact that some of the members might want purchases to end sooner.”

U.S. President Barack Obama released his proposed 2014 budget to Congress today, more than two months past the Feb. 4 deadline, after Democrats and Republicans deadlocked over taxes and spending. Under the plan, President Obama wants to again rely on the top-earning U.S. households for most of the tax increases he’s proposing.

Constellation Brands Inc. and Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. are among six companies in the S&P 500 reporting earnings today.

Members of the benchmark gauge will post a 1.8 percent profit decline in the first quarter, according to analysts’ projections compiled by Bloomberg.

Companies whose growth is most tied to economic swings led today’s rally. The Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index climbed 1.6 percent, and the Dow Jones Transportation Average jumped 1.8 percent.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, which measures the cost of using options as insurance against declines in the S&P 500, slipped 3.7 percent to 12.36. The gauge, known as the VIX, is down 31 percent this year and reached its lowest level since February 2007 last month.

Betting on banks and software makers during earnings season has rewarded investors during the bull market. Since April 2009, the industries have generated stock market gains averaging about 2 percent in the two weeks after Alcoa Inc. marked the start of the earnings season, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

That compared with a gain of 1.7 percent for the S&P 500 in those weeks.

The KBW Bank Index climbed 1.4 percent, with 23 of its 24 members advancing. Citigroup added 2.7 percent to $45.06 while JPMorgan gained 1.2 percent to $49.25. JPMorgan and Wells Fargo & Co. are scheduled to report earnings on April 12.

The S&P 500 Information Technology Index soared 1.8 percent to the highest level since Oct. 17. The Nasdaq Composite Index surged the most since Jan. 2.

Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker, rallied 2.3 percent to $22.26. Micron jumped 5.4 percent to $10.09. Sales in the chip industry will grow 4 percent this year, after falling 2 to 3 percent in 2012, said Morris Chang, chief executive officer at Taiwan Semiconductor, the world’s largest contract producer of chips.

Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, climbed 2.8 percent to $29.92. The Food and Drug Administration assigned the company’s palbociclib compound a breakthrough designation under a new regulation that’s aimed to expedite the development and review of drugs that may demonstrate substantial improvements in treatment for serious diseases, Pfizer said.

Facebook Inc. gained 3.7 percent to $27.57. General Motors Co. said it will test advertisements on the world’s largest social-network service a year after the automaker quit running marketing messages on Facebook’s website.

Health Management Associates Inc., the operator of acute- care hospitals, plunged 16 percent to $10.53 after it reduced the high end of its 2013 earnings forecast.

Other hospital stocks also fell. Community Health Systems Inc. lost 3.8 percent to $42.26. Tenet Healthcare Corp. slipped 5.5 percent to $41.14. Deutsche Bank AG cut the three stocks to hold from buy.

 

Have  a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

 

This is a good point to understand that the sum and substance of this lecture

is that there is but One Existence, and that One Existence seen through different constitutions

appears either as the earth, or heaven, or hell, or gods, or ghosts, or men, or demons, or world,

or all these things.

Swami Vivekananda, 1863-1902

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

Sometimes it takes a good fall to really know

where you stand.

-Hayley Williams, 1988-

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents: Sorry this is being sent to you late this morning.  We had a meeting with our accountant last night (as many of us are doing at this income tax time of year 🙁 ) which lasted much longer than expected and I didn’t get back to the office to send this.  Markets are behaving nicely!

Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. –Winston Churchill

Photos of the day – April  9th, 2013

A bird makes a nest near Diani Beach on the Indian Ocean coast of Kenya, some 19 miles south of Mombasa. Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

Will Jones and his daughter Isla head off to her school Tuesday morning after a spring snowstorm in Boulder, Colorado. Paul Aiken/The Daily Camera/AP

Market Closes for April 9th, 2013

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	14673.46	+59.98    +0.41%
S&P 500	1568.61	+5.54    +0.35%
NASDAQ	3237.858	+15.606    +0.48%
TSX	12484.05	+139.49
		+1.13%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	13192.35	-0.24
		—
HANG  SENG	21870.34	+152.29
		+0.70%
SENSEX	18226.48	-211.30
		-1.15%
FTSE 100	6313.21	+36.27
		+0.58%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.774	1.766
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.395	2.371
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.7502	1.7460
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.9377	2.9147

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98394	0.98346
US   $	1.01633	1.01681
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.32912	0.75238
US  $	1.30776	0.76466

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1585.47	1573.04
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	94.20	93.36
BRENT	106.43	105.42

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

April 9 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rose the most in more than four months as raw-materials producers advanced after weaker-than-forecast inflation in China boosted metals prices.

Barrick Gold Corp. and Goldcorp Inc. climbed at least 1.5 percent as gold advanced. Teck Resources Ltd. and First Quantum Minerals Ltd. rallied more than 1.5 percent as copper rose.

Endeavour Silver Corp. surged 8.3 percent as the metal’s price increased the most since January. Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank, the nation’s largest lenders, added more than 0.5 percent amid better-than-estimated housing data.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index rose 139.49 points, or 1.1 percent, to 12,484.05 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, its biggest increase since Nov. 19. The benchmark equity gauge erased its loss for the year. Trading volume was 9.8 percent lower than the 30-day average.

“The inflation data presents some support that as China’s economy is slowing there is still growth,” Anish Chopra, managing director and fund manager with TD Asset Management Ltd. in Toronto, said. His firm oversees about C$204 billion ($201 billion). “It’s positive that there’s still demand in the economy. People were concerned about a significant slowdown in commodities.”

Consumer prices in China increased 2.1 percent in March from a year earlier, the country’s statistics bureau said today.

Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg forecast a 2.5 percent gain. The reading fell from February’s increase of 3.2 percent, reducing pressure on policy makers to tighten credit. China is the world’s biggest user of industrial metals and Canada’s second- largest trading partner.

Investors also weighed first-quarter results from Alcoa Inc. The largest U.S. producer of aluminum posted earnings that surpassed analyst estimates while its sales fell short of forecasts.

Raw-materials stocks increased the most in the S&P/TSX. The group jumped 2.4 percent for its biggest gain since March 6.

Gold climbed 0.9 percent to settle at $1,586.70 an ounce, copper added 2.1 percent to $3.4415 a pound, and silver advanced 2.7 percent to $27.881 an ounce, the largest jump since Jan. 30.

Barrick Gold increased 1.5 percent to C$27.15, while Goldcorp gained 3.1 percent to C$32.93. Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd., which is developing the Oyu Tolgoi gold deposit in Mongolia, climbed 6.2 percent to C$6.54.

Teck Resources, Canada’s largest diversified miner, jumped 4.9 percent, the biggest increase since November, to C$29.37.

First Quantum Minerals, a copper miner, rose 1.5 percent to C$19.24. Endeavour Silver surged 8.3 percent to C$6.37.

Niko Resources Ltd. surged 14 percent, the biggest gain in the S&P/TSX, to C$7.14, as oil advanced for a second day. Suncor Energy Inc., Canada’s largest energy producer, jumped 3.1 percent to C$29.84.

Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. soared 7.8 percent to C$21 after reporting daily output in the first quarter was close to the upper end of its target range. Chief Executive Officer Ronald Pantin said today in a statement that the oil and gas company will try to cut operating costs by about $8 per barrel for the rest of the year.

Royal Bank rose 1.2 percent to C$60.17 and TD Bank advanced 0.5 percent to C$81.11, as each snapped a four-day losing streak.

Canadian housing starts unexpectedly increased for a second month in March and building permits rose in February, evidence that low borrowing costs are supporting construction.

“Canada’s housing starts exceeded expectations, so that was great,” Chopra said. “People were concerned about a slowing Canadian economy, so now we have some positive data points.”

Agrium Inc. dropped 2.8 percent to C$96.55 after investors rejected a slate of dissident board nominees promoted by activist shareholder Jana Partners LLC, which has called for changes at the Calgary-based fertilizer maker.

US

By Lu Wang and Lindsey Rupp

April 9 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose, giving the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index its first back-to-back gain in more than three weeks, on optimism over earnings and as commodities gained amid a report showing China’s inflation slowed.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 0.4 percent to 1,568.56 at 4 p.m. in New York, paring an earlier gain of as much as 0.7 percent. Raw-materials producers rose 1.1 percent amid speculation that tamed inflation would reduce pressure on Chinese policy makers to tighten credit.

“The commodity pop is basically tied to the view on China,” Ralph Shive, the South Bend, Indiana-based manager of the $1.2 billion Wasatch-Large Cap Value Fund, said by phone.

“The market is acting strongly. It doesn’t seem to want to go down. You get dips, and they seem to pop right back.”

The S&P 500 has gained 1 percent in the past two days as investors speculated first-quarter earnings would help equities rally. The benchmark index lost 1 percent last week, the biggest decline this year, amid reports showing U.S. payrolls had the smallest gain in nine months in March while manufacturing and services industries expanded less than forecast.

Income at S&P 500 companies probably fell 1.8 percent in the first quarter, the first year-over-year drop since 2009, analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg show. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. are among S&P 500 companies scheduled to report earnings this week.

Alcoa Inc., the first company in the Dow to release results this season, reported earnings that exceeded analysts’ estimates while revenue trailed projections. The company cited lower metal prices and the impact of smelter curtailments in Spain and Italy for the decline in sales. The shares dropped 0.1 percent.

“Analyst estimates might be a little pessimistic at this point,” Eric Teal, chief investment officer at First Citizens BancShares Inc., which manages $4.5 billion in Raleigh, North Carolina, said in a phone interview. “Earnings will have the potential to surprise on the upside.”

A report from China showed inflation slowed last month from a 10-month high. In the U.S., inventories at U.S. wholesalers fell unexpectedly in February as uncertainty about fiscal policy kept business spending in check.

The S&P 500 has more than doubled from its 12-year low in March 2009, helped by the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented bond purchases and three straight years of profit growth.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in a speech yesterday that economic conditions were far from where he would like them to be. The Federal Open Market Committee releases minutes of its March 19-20 meeting tomorrow. After that meeting, Bernanke said further gains in the U.S. labor market were needed for the Fed to consider reducing its monetary easing.

 

Have a wonderful day everyone!

 

Be magnificent!

 

It is only a mind that looks at a tree or the stars or the sparkling waters of a river

with complete abandonment that knows what beauty is,

and when we are actually seeing we are in a state of love.

Krishnamurti, 1895-1986

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.

-Lauren Bacall, 1924-

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

A Wall Street Journal Roundup, April 8^th, 2013:

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher—who died Monday from a stroke at age 87—retired from public engagements in 2002 following a series of small strokes, and was only occasionally seen in public since then.

Here are memorable quotes from her public life:

“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” — May 20, 1965, speech to National Union of Townswomen’s Guilds Conference.

AFP/Getty Images

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher greeting people who gathered to see her in Moscow, during her official visit to the USSR in March 1987.

“There are dangers in consensus: it could be an attempt to satisfy people holding no particular views about anything.…No great party can survive except on the basis of firm beliefs about what it wants to do.” — Oct. 10, 1968, Conservative Party conference.

“I don’t think there will be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime.” — TV interview March 5, 1973.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you tonight in my red chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up, my fair hair gently waved…the Iron Lady of the Western World. Me? A Cold War warrior? Well, yes—if that is how they wish to interpret my defense of values of freedoms fundamental to our way of life.” — Jan. 31, 1976.

“The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen.” — From the speech that led to her being dubbed The Iron Lady, Jan. 19, 1976.

“To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the ‘U’ turn, I have only one thing to say. ‘You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.’ I say that not only to you but to our friends overseas and also to those who are not our friends.” — Conservative Party Conference, Oct. 1980.

“You don’t win by just being against things, you only win by being for things and making your message perfectly clear.” — Feb. 11, 1975.

“I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.” — House of Commons, March 31, 1982.

“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” — Quoting St. Francis of Assisi after winning the general election, May 1979.

‘No! No! No!’ statement in the House of Commons on European Council Summit Oct. 30, 1990

“When you’ve spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment, it’s exciting to have a real crisis on your hands.” — May 14, 1982, commenting on the Falkland Islands war.

“We fought to show that aggression does not pay and that the robber cannot be allowed to get away with his swag. We fought with the support of so many throughout the world.…Yet we also fought alone.” — July 3, 1982, on the Falkland Islands war.

“I was asked whether I was trying to restore Victorian values. I said straight out I was. And I am.” — July 21, 1983, speech to British Jewish Community.

“That nations that have gone for equality, like Communism, have neither freedom nor justice nor equality, they’ve the greatest inequalities of all, the privileges of the politicians are far greater compared with the ordinary folk than in any other country. The nations that have gone for freedom, justice and independence of people have still freedom and justice, and they have far more equality between their people, far more respect for each individual than the other nations. Go my way. You will get freedom and justice and much less difference between people than you do in the Soviet Union.” — TV interview, January 1983

“There is no week, nor day, nor hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance. Tyranny may always enter—there is no charm or bar against it.” — July 19, 1984, during the coal miners’ strike.

“Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.” Sunday Times, May 1, 1981.

“We can do business together.” — Dec. 17, 1984, speaking of Mikhail Gorbachev.

“No one would remember the good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well.” — Jan. 6, 1986, television interview.

“There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” — Oct. 31, 1987, magazine interview.

“We are a grandmother.” — March 3, 1989, announcing the birth of her first grandchild.

“If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time and you would achieve nothing.” — May 3, 1989, commenting on her 10th anniversary as prime minister.

“I am not immortal, but I’ve got a lot left in me yet.” — Sept. 9, 1990.

“I cannot imagine how any diplomat, or any dramatist, could improve on (Ronald Reagan’s) words to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva summit: ‘Let me tell you why it is we distrust you.’ Those words are candid and tough and they cannot have been easy to hear. But they are also a clear invitation to a new beginning and a new relationship that would be rooted in trust.” — Eulogy at the funeral of former President Ronald Reagan, June 11, 2004.

—The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Photos of the day – April  8th, 2013

A boy stands in front of a statue of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher by Neil Simmons, 2001, on display in the Guildhall Art Gallery in the city of London. Olivia Harris/Reuters

An installation called ‘Hooked up’ by lighting designer Dean Skira is displayed, part of the Milan’s Furniture Fair, in Milan, Italy. Luca Bruno/AP

Market Closes for April 8th, 2013

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	14613.48	+48.23    +0.33%
S&P 500	1563.07	+9.79    +0.63%
NASDAQ	3222.252	+18.393    +0.57%
TSX	12344.56	+12.71
		+0.10%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	13192.59	+358.95
		+2.80%
HANG  SENG	21718.05	-8.85
		-0.04%
SENSEX	18437.78	-12.45
		-0.07%
FTSE 100	6276.94	+27.16
		+0.43%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.766	1.753
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.371	2.362
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.7460	1.7128
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.9147	2.8750

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98346	0.98639
US   $	1.01681	1.01380
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.32348	0.75559
US  $	1.30159	0.76829

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1573.04	1581.15
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	93.36	92.70
BRENT	105.42	105.14

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

April 8 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rose for the first time in six days as gains in financials and energy shares offset a slump among gold producers.

Husky Energy Inc. and Petrobakken Energy Ltd. climbed at least 1.8 percent as crude rallied from its biggest weekly loss in six months. Sun Life Financial Inc. and Brookfield Asset Management Inc. gained more than 1.6 percent. Agrium Inc. rose 1.6 percent after an activist investor said two of its nominees likely received enough votes to sit on the board. Barrick Gold Corp. and Goldcorp Inc. slid at least 1.2 percent as the metal slumped for the fourth time in five sessions.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index rose 12.71 points, or 0.1 percent, to 12,344.56 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The benchmark gauge fell 3.3 percent last week to erase its gains for the year. Trading volume was 11 percent lower than the 30- day average at this time of the day.

“We’re seeing a bit of a bounce back from last week’s correction in Canada,” Youssef Zohny, portfolio manager with Stenner Investment Partners of Richardson GMP Ltd., said from Vancouver. Richardson GMP manages about C$15 billion ($15 billion). “Energy has been generally outperforming metals this year. Financials in general are taking the aggressive moves of the Bank of Japan positively.”

Japan’s central bank last week said it will boost monthly bond purchases to 7.5 trillion yen, exceeding the 5.2 trillion yen forecast by economists surveyed by Bloomberg news.

Sun Life climbed 2.4 percent to C$27.16 while Brookfield Asset Management rose 1.6 percent to C$37.82 as the S&P/TSX Financials index increased 0.2 percent as a group to snap three days of losses.

Oil rose 0.7 percent after tumbling 4.7 percent last week, the biggest drop in six months. Futures added 66 cents to settle at $93.36 in New York, as militants and government forces clashed in Nigeria and talks between Iran and world powers failed to make progress.

Husky Energy Inc. jumped 2.4 percent to C$28.77 and Petrobakken Energy Ltd. added 1.8 percent to C$8.33.

“The Canadian market has been so far behind the U.S. that any bit of good news on the commodity side will cause the market to do better,” Ian Nakamoto, director of research with MacDougall MacDougall & MacTier Inc., said on the phone from Toronto. He helps manage about C$4 billion.

Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Corp. rose 3.1 percent to C$34.07. The company said it is considering strategic alternatives, including selling itself, in response to Rio Tinto Group’s potential sale of its controlling interest in Iron Ore Co. of Canada, the country’s largest producer of the commodity used in steelmaking.

Labrador Iron Ore owns 15 percent of Iron Ore Co. and collects a royalty of 7 cents on every dollar of revenue generated by the iron ore producer.

Agrium, the Calgary-based fertilizer producer, added 1.6 percent to C$99.33. Jana Partners LLC, the largest shareholder, has been pushing for changes since May and proposed five nominees for 12 positions on the Agrium board. Voting results are expected to be disclosed tomorrow.

Barrick Gold retreated 1.4 percent to C$26.76 and Goldcorp lost 1.2 percent to C$31.93. The metal’s price slid 0.2 percent to $1,572.50 as a stronger dollar reduced the appeal of gold as an alternative investment.

Royal Bank of Canada dropped 0.3 percent to C$59.44, its lowest level since December. The government began a probe into whether the bank hired foreign workers to replace domestic staff, the CBC television network reported on its website. One of the employees being replaced said the new workers were from India.

Diane Finley, Human Resources Minister, said it would be “unacceptable” to replace domestic employees with foreign workers.

US

By Lu Wang and Lindsey Rupp

April 8 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose as investors speculated first-quarter earnings would help equities rebound from their biggest weekly decline of the year.

Alcoa Inc. rose 1.8 percent in regular trading, before reporting first-quarter results that disappointed investors after the market close. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. rose the most in the S&P 500 after Microsoft Corp. was said to use AMD chips in its next Xbox game console. BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. surged 13 percent as China expedited the approval of its anti-influenza drug Peramivir. Lufkin Industries Inc. jumped 38 percent as General Electric Co. agreed to buy the company.

The S&P 500 rose 0.6 percent to 1,563.07 at 4 p.m. in New York, after falling as much as 0.3 percent earlier. The index erased its April 5 loss sparked by the government’s monthly jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 48.23 points, or 0.3 percent, to 14,613.48. About 5.1 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, 19 percent below the three-month average.

“Earnings clearly are going to be the driver for a lot of volatility in the next couple of weeks,” Omar Aguilar, the San Francisco-based chief investment officer of equities at Charles Schwab Investment Management said in a telephone interview. The firm had $219.3 billion in assets under management as of Dec. 31. “The consensus is that we’re going to have a pretty diverse and poor earnings season. I think we’ll probably see a lot of surprises on the positive side, which is good.”

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. are among nine S&P 500 companies scheduled to report earnings this week. Analysts project profits at S&P 500 companies fell 1.8 percent in the latest quarter, the first year-over-year drop since 2009, estimates compiled by Bloomberg show. Analysts had predicted a 1.2 percent increase when surveyed in January.

The S&P 500 fell 1 percent last week as U.S. payrolls had the smallest gain in nine months in March while other reports showed manufacturing and services industries expanded less than forecast. The index climbed to an all-time high of 1,570.25 on April 2. The S&P 500 has more than doubled from its 12-year low in March 2009, helped by the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented bond purchases and three straight years of profit growth.

The benchmark gauge has alternated between gains and losses for the past 13 days, the longest period ever without a winning or losing streak, according to LPL Financial Holdings Inc.

Today’s reversal “continued a pattern, which has shown for quite some time now, which is any weakness is met with buying at some point of the day,” James Gaul, a portfolio manager at Boston Advisors LLC, which oversees about $2.5 billion in assets, said in a telephone interview. “There are people who are afraid of missing out on further rallies.”

Nine of the 10 S&P 500 industry groups rose today as consumer stocks gained the most, adding at least 1.1 percent.

Phone stocks retreated 0.5 percent.

Alcoa, the first Dow member to publish results each quarter, jumped 1.8 percent to $8.39 in regular trading. After the market close, the largest U.S. aluminum producer reported first-quarter earnings that exceeded analysts’ estimates as demand from U.S. automakers increased. Sales declined to $5.83 billion from $6.01 billion, missing the $5.88 billion average of 11 estimates. Alcoa shares slid 1.4 percent to $8.27 as of 7:08 p.m. in New York.

AMD surged 13 percent, the most since July 2011, to $2.59.

Microsoft will use an AMD processor in its next Xbox game console as it seeks to cut the cost of building machines and get developers to create more titles, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The shift means Microsoft will drop the Power PC technology designed by International Business Machines Corp., and game discs made for the current Xbox 360 won’t be compatible. IBM slid less than 0.1 percent to $209.32 and Microsoft declined 0.4 percent to $28.59.

BioCryst surged 13 percent to $1.92, adding to a 29 percent gain on April 5 to close at the highest level since November.

China’s Food and Drug Administration said it expedited the approval of Peramivir as authorities reported three more infections of the deadly H7N9 virus that has killed six people in the country since March.

Lufkin soared 38 percent, its biggest gain ever, to $87.96.

GE, the world’s largest provider of power-generation equipment and services, said it will acquire Lufkin for about $3.3 billion, or $88.50 a share. GE rose 0.8 percent to $23.12.

Johnson & Johnson fell 1.1 percent to $81.11. The world’s largest seller of health-care products may cut its earnings forecast for 2013 because of a devaluation of the Venezuelan bolivar, JPMorgan said in a note. The firm reduced the stock’s rating to neutral from overweight.

CA Inc., a maker of software for managing information technology, slipped 1.2 percent to $24.30. Abhey Lamba, an analyst with Mizuho Securities USA Inc., cut the stock’s rating to neutral from buy.

Netflix Inc. fell 1 percent to $163.06, extending its decline to eight consecutive days. The stock has lost 14 percent during the losing streak, its longest such stretch since October 2008. Competition among pay-TV vendors is increasing as Intel Corp. plans to start an online service this year, while Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. has recently introduced its own subscription streaming service.

Wagers that U.S. stock volatility will increase have reached a three-year high on concern American companies are getting ready to report the first slump in profit since 2009.

There were 6.54 million calls on the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index and 2.34 million puts on April 4, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The ratio jumped to 2.93-to-1 last month, the highest since March 2010. The VIX, tracking S&P 500 option prices, has climbed 17 percent from its six-year low in March and lost 5.2 percent to 13.19 today.

“The weaker data and earnings would encourage higher volatility after an unchallenged rally throughout the first quarter,” Andrew Greeley, a senior managing director at Stamford, Connecticut-based Acorn Derivatives Management Corp., which manages more than $450 million in volatility assets, said on April 5.

Even bulls are taking steps to protect profits after gains in U.S. stocks added $10 trillion to equity values.

Russ Koesterich of BlackRock Inc. and Valentijn Van Nieuwenhuijzen at ING Investment Management, who bought equities in 2012, say risks are rising during a period in which stocks have lost an average 5.2 percent since 2010, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Concern the U.S. economy isn’t expanding fast enough prompted Koesterich to sell smaller companies. Van Nieuwenhuijzen is holding off on new share purchases.

Investors managing more than $5 trillion say they’re looking for ways to limit losses after the S&P 500 reached a record. That got harder in the first quarter, when rallies in drugmakers and utilities pushed valuations for so-called defensive industries to the highest since 2008.

“You have an increased risk of a correction now,” Koesterich, the chief investment strategist at New York-based BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager with $3.8 trillion in assets, said in an April 4 phone interview. “The parts of the market that have done the best, the defensives, have gotten very expensive,” he said. “This is a very different rally than what people are used to.”

 

Have  a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

 

In his essence, man is not a slave to himself, nor to the world; he is a lover.

His freedom and accomplishments are in love,

which is another name for perfect understanding.

In this ability to understand, in this impregnation of everything that is,

he is one with the Spirit that penetrates everything,

and that is also the breath of the soul.

Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1901

As ever,

 

Carolann

I was never less alone than when by myself.

-Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

Dear friends,

Tangents:

Whitstable

None of it was the way we’d thought:

the shore path not even on the shore,

the oyster bar closed up, and the air s

o thick the streetlamps bled through it.

 

I was running a fever.  You worked

by the window, notebook in your lap,

then came to kiss me.

 

The king-size bed, the broad window

over the grey estuary: all ours.

 

We bundled up, ate chips on a bench

under a sky without a single star.

 

At the end, on the train, when I lay

in your lap, and you looked down

and I looked up, we saw the same future.

 

But we’re in that future now,

and it’s not what we imagined.

 

You’re in your home, I’m in mine.

That day wasn’t a promise,

it was just the day it was.

-from Archangel, by Henry Shukman

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. – Nelson Mandela

On this day in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot to death in Memphis, Tenn.

Photo of the Day –April 4th, 2013

Biomedical PhD student Meghan Betts (l.) and neurotechnology PhD student Andreas Thomik pose as they demonstrate a motion capture suit at the Strictly Science exhibition at Imperial College in London. Students at the university are using the motion capture suit to gather data about how movement is affected by age and disease. Olivia Harris/Reuters

Market Closes for April 4^th, 2013

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	14606.11	+55.76    +0.38%
S&P 500	1559.98	+6.29    +0.40%
NASDAQ	3224.983	+6.379    +0.20%
TSX	12363.05	-59.07
		-0.48%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	12634.54	+272.34
		+2.20%
HANG  SENG	22337.49	-30.33
		-0.14%
SENSEX	18509.70	-291.94
		-1.55%
FTSE 100	6344.12	-76.16
		-1.19%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.787	1.828
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.421	2.454
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.7625	1.8106
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.9890	3.0520

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98767	0.98573
US   $	1.01246	1.01448
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.30955	0.76362
US  $	1.29343	0.77314

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1554.27	1557.85
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	93.26	94.45
BRENT	106.94	107.84

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Lu Wang

April 4 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell for the fourth day, the longest streak of losses since November, as commodities extended a week-long drop and more Americans than forecast filed for jobless benefits.

Energy and financial companies slid the most among 10 groups in the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index, sinking at least 1.1 percent. Petrominerales Ltd. and Cenovus Energy Inc. declined more than 2.9 percent as oil prices retreated. Toronto- Dominion Bank lost 1.7 percent after its chief executive officer said the commodity slump may slow earnings growth. Tahoe Resources Inc. rallied 11 percent as Raymond James Financial Inc. raised the stock’s rating.

The S&P/TSX fell 59.07 points, or 0.5 percent, to 12,363.05 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, the lowest close since Dec. 28. The benchmark gauge plunged 2.1 percent yesterday, erasing its gain for the year as concern over global economic growth weighed on oil and metal prices. Commodity stocks make up 40 percent of the benchmark equity index by weighting.

“You’ve got a difficult commodity environment,” Brian Huen, managing partner at Toronto-based Red Sky Capital Management Ltd., which oversees C$225 million ($222 million), said in a phone interview. “Sentiment toward the Canadian stock market, because of the exposure it has to resources, is pretty negative now.”

U.S. data showed today that jobless claims increased by 28,000 to 385,000 in the week ended March 30, the highest since Nov. 24. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a drop to 353,000.

Central banks in Japan and Europe reassured investors that they will keep economies awash in cash to bolster growth.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said policy will remain accommodative after the central bank kept its benchmark rate at 0.75 percent. The Bank of Japan said it will buy longer- term government bonds as part of its asset-purchase program.

Energy shares accounted for nine of the 10 worst performers in the S&P/TSX today. Oil capped the biggest two-day drop since October as the jobless data raised concern about slower U.S. growth before tomorrow’s payrolls report from the Labor Department. Crude lost 1.3 percent to $93.26, and is down $3.97 in the past two sessions.

Petrominerales, which explores oil and natural gas in Colombia and Peru, slumped 5.5 percent to C$5.69, the lowest since January 2009. Cenovus slid 2.9 percent to C$29.99. MEG Energy Corp. dropped the most in the S&P/TSX, losing 5.6 percent to C$30, its lowest close ever.

Financial shares slipped 1.1 percent as a group. Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s largest lender by assets, lost 1.6 percent to C$60.39, its lowest close of the year. Bank of Montreal erased 1.4 percent to C$62.66.

TD Bank fell 1.7 percent, the most since December, to C$82.

CEO Edmund Clark said at the company’s annual meeting that it will be “tougher” for the nation’s second-biggest lender to meet its target of 7 percent to 10 percent annual earnings growth as global demand for Canada’s commodities has softened.

Tahoe Resources rallied 11 percent to C$18.81. Chris Thompson, an analyst with Raymond James, raised the stock’s rating to outperform, an equivalent of buy, from market perform after the company received the final mining license for the Escobal silver mine in Guatemala.

First Quantum Minerals Ltd. rose 3.6 percent to C$18.61.

The Canadian copper miner completed on April 2 its C$5 billion ($5 billion) hostile takeover of Inmet Mining Corp., helping it to become the world’s fifth largest producer of the metal.

Copper futures for May delivery added 0.6 percent to settle at $3.3515 an ounce after touching the lowest price since August yesterday.

US

By Lindsey Rupp and Nikolaj Gammeltoft

April 4 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose, rebounding from the biggest selloff in more than a month for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as central banks’ pledges on stimulus efforts overshadowed a rise in American jobless claims.

McDonald’s Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. added more than 1.4 percent to pace advances in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Best Buy Co. rose 16 percent, the most in the S&P 500, after Samsung Electronics Co. said it would staff mini-stores at the retailer’s U.S. locations. Facebook Inc. climbed 3.1 percent as it announced smartphone software with a modified version of Google Inc.’s operating system.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4 percent to 1,559.98 at 4 p.m. in New York. The Dow gained 55.76 points, or 0.4 percent, to 14,606.11.

About 6 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, 5.3 percent below the three-month average.

“Expectations were high for the Bank of Japan and they managed to exceed expectations,” Janelle Nelson, a Minneapolis- based portfolio analyst with RBC Wealth Management’s portfolio advisory group, said in a phone interview. Her firm manages about $315 billion in client assets. “The big issue for investors will be what the U.S. employment report shows tomorrow.”

Equities climbed today after the Bank of Japan strengthened a stimulus program that will see the central bank buy 7 trillion yen ($73 billion) of bonds a month. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi signaled the bank will keep monetary policy loose for an extended period and that further easing is possible if economic conditions deteriorate. ECB officials meeting in Frankfurt left interest rates on hold.

The bull market in equities entered its fifth year last month, with the S&P 500 more than doubling from its bottom in 2009, as corporate earnings topped estimates and the Federal Reserve carried out an unprecedented three rounds of bond purchases to spur the economy. The S&P 500 and Dow closed at all-time highs on April 2.

Jobless claims rose by 28,000 to 385,000 in the week ended March 30, the highest since Nov. 24, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 47 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a drop to 353,000. The results reflected the difficulty the government has adjusting the figures around the Easter holiday and spring break at schools.

The S&P 500 slid 1.1 percent yesterday, the most in more than a month, as a report from ADP Research Institute showed companies boosted employment by 158,000 workers in March, below economists’ forecasts calling for a 200,000 gain.

The jobs data come before tomorrow’s non-farm payrolls report from the Labor Department, which may show employers hired a net 190,000 workers for the month, according to the median forecast of 87 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Investors will begin to focus on first-quarter earnings reports beginning next week, with Alcoa Inc. scheduled on April 8 to be the first company in the Dow to report results. Profits among S&P 500 companies are forecast to decline 1.9 percent for the period, for the first retreat since 2009, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. In January, analysts forecast earnings growth of 1.2 percent. Profit expanded by 8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, which measures the cost of using options as insurance against losses, fell 2.3 percent to 13.89 today, after jumping 11 percent yesterday. The gauge, known as the VIX, is down 23 percent for the year.

Phone, utility and financial companies rose the most among 10 groups in the S&P 500, increasing at least 0.9 percent.

Technology and energy shares slipped more than 0.1 percent.

McDonald’s added 1.4 percent to $100.63. AT&T Inc. jumped 1.7 percent to $37.91. Bank of America Corp. increased 1.1 percent to $11.94 and JPMorgan Chase & Co. rose 1.4 percent to $47.49.

Hewlett-Packard added 1.8 percent to $22.30. After the close of regular trading, the company said Ray Lane is stepping down as chairman, in a shakeup that underscores investors’ dismay with the botched acquisition of Autonomy Corp. The shares slipped 0.9 percent as of 5:05 p.m. New York time.

Best Buy climbed 16 percent to $25.13, the highest level since March 2012. South Korea-based electronics maker Samsung said it will open 500 Samsung Experience Shops inside Best Buy locations starting April 8. The companies plan to add smaller Samsung spaces by June at about 1,000 other Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile locations, Samsung said.

Facebook rose 3.1 percent to $27.07. The company unveiled smartphone software that puts social-networking features front and center on a handset, stepping up efforts to boost sales of advertising on small screens. The new software, which the company calls Home, makes it easier to access Facebook features on a smartphone’s home screen, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said at an event today in Menlo Park, California.

J.C. Penney Co. gained 4.5 percent to $15.08 after Gilford Securities Inc. analyst Bernard Sosnick raised his rating on the department-store company to neutral from sell, adding that the company is “far from out of the woods.”

Brinker International Inc. added 2.1 percent to $38.48 after Raymond James Financial Inc. raised its rating on the full-service restaurant company to the equivalent of a buy from a hold rating. Equity analyst Bryan Elliott’s 12-month target price is $42 a share.

Teradata Corp. fell 7.5 percent, the most in the S&P 500, to $51.89 after Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty cut her estimates for the database management company’s 2013 revenue and earnings estimates. Huberty removed the company from her best ideas list.

 

Have  a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

 

Where water joins with water, it is not a meeting but a unification.

Swami Prajnanpad, 1891-1974

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement

of everyday thinking.

-Albert Einstein, 1879-1955

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Keeping with the theme of poetry month, from W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1938,” published in October 1939:

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives;

The unmentionable odour of death

Offends the September night….

 

Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;

Analysed all in his book,

The enlightenment driven away

The habit-forming pain,

Mismanagement and grief:

We must suffer them all again.

I was reminded of this poem because I had a conversation tonight at my office with a friend who had some money to invest and wanted me to make sense for her of all the uncertainties that seem to plague mankind now:  The threats from North Korea, Iran, the Eurozone crises, government and corporate pensions in peril, the aftermath of the global financial crises with governments printing money, high unemployment, people living longer with not enough savings to really live longer.  What should investors do?  I told her what they should do and I also told her that if she could time travel back in time and immerse herself for a moment sometime in the ‘30’s after the 1929 financial crises and all the geopolitical turmoil facing the world, the rise of Nazism, fascism etc., she would feel much of the uncertainty that people are feeling today.   Read Auden’s poem again – he wrote this in 1938.  To paraphrase Mark Twain, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Birthday: Marlon Brando, April 3, 1924

April 3^rd, 1948 – President Truman signs the Marshall Plan.

April 3^rd, 1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “Mountaintop” speech in Memphis, Tennessee; less than 24 hours later he is assassinated.

Until you value yourself, you won’t  value your time. –M. Scott Peck

Photos of the Day –April 3rd, 2013

Stock prices displayed on an electronic board are reflected on raindrops on the window of the board outside a brokerage in Tokyo. Yuya Shino/Reuters

Kashmiri school children walk through a tulip garden on the outskirts of Srinagar, India. Kashmir is known for its mountains, lakes, forests, and moderate weather. Mukhtar Khan/AP

Market Closes for April 3^rd, 2013

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	14550.35	-111.66    -0.76%
S&P 500	1553.69	-16.56    -1.05%
NASDAQ	3218.604	-36.258    -1.11%
TSX	12422.12	-259.98
		-2.05%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	12362.20	+358.77
		+2.99%
HANG  SENG	22337.49	-30.33
		-0.14%
SENSEX	18801.64	-239.31
		-1.26%
FTSE 100	6420.28	-70.38
		-1.08%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.828	1.874
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.454	2.503
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.8106	1.8590
U.S.   30 Year Bond	3.0520	3.0999

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98573	0.98567
US   $	1.01448	1.01454
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.30304	0.76743
US  $	1.28445	0.77854

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1557.85	1576.17
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	94.45	97.19
BRENT	107.84	111.03

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Lu Wang

April 3 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell the most in nine months, erasing gains for the year, after a plunge in oil and worse-than-estimated U.S. economic data spurred declines in commodity shares.

Barrick Gold Corp., the largest producer of the metal, sank 5.6 percent for the biggest drop since November. Alacer Gold Corp., Alamos Gold Inc. and Torex Gold Resources Inc. dropped more than 6.5 percent. Suncor Energy Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. slumped at least 3.3 percent as oil prices retreated the most this year.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index fell 259.98 points, or 2.1 percent, to 12,422.12 at 4 p.m. in Toronto for the biggest drop since June. The gauge has fallen 0.1 percent this year, erasing a gain of as much as 3.6 percent. Trading volume was 22 percent above the 30-day average.

“Commodity stocks in general have to do with global economic growth,” Ian Nakamoto, director of research at MacDougall MacDougall & MacTier Inc. in Toronto, said in a phone interview. His firm manages about C$4 billion ($4 billion).

“When there is a question mark about the growth in the U.S. and the global economy, those companies tend to take it on the chin and do poorly.”

Reports today showed American companies added fewer workers than projected in March while service industries expanded at the slowest pace in seven months.

The S&P/TSX 60 VIX, a gauge for options to protect against losses in the index of largest stocks in the Toronto Stock Exchange, jumped 22 percent to 15.04 for the biggest rally since August 2011.

Among the 239 companies in the S&P/TSX, only 26 stocks rose, the fewest since August, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The benchmark gauge for Canadian equities reached a 20-month high on March 12 and has since fallen 3.5 percent. Raw-materials and energy producers account for 40 percent of the index’s weighting.

Commodities’ supercycle is “probably” over and prices are unlikely to match their performance over the past decade, according to UBS AG. Growth in China is slowing and becoming less commodity-intensive, London-based strategists Stephane Deo and Ramin Nakisa wrote in a report dated yesterday.

“Because we’re so much driven by commodities and materials, we actually feel it before the rest of the data comes out to suggest that there is a threat,” Adrian Mastracci, a portfolio manager at KCM Wealth Management Inc. in Vancouver, said in a phone interview. “Maybe some people are saying the economic picture is not always as rosy as we’d like it to be.”

Raw-material producers in the benchmark gauge plunged 3.4 percent as a group, leaving the S&P/TSX Materials Index at its lowest level since July 2009. Gold futures for June delivery tumbled 1.4 percent to settle at $1,553.50 an ounce in New York, after touching $1,549.70, the lowest since June 28.

The metal has declined 7.3 percent in 2013, after rallying the past 12 years. Today’s settlement leaves prices down 18 percent from a record close of $1,891.90 on Aug. 22, 2011, bringing it closer to the threshold of the 20 percent benchmark for a bear market.

Global government stimulus has cut the likelihood of further banking and liquidity crises and reduced the need for a protection of wealth, Credit Suisse Group AG wrote in a report today. The bank cut its 2013 gold forecast by 9.2 percent to $1,580 and lowered its silver estimate by 11 percent to $28.50.

Silver sank 1.7 percent to $26.80 an ounce and copper fell to an eight-month low.

Gold and silver producers accounted for nine of the 10 worst performers in the S&P/TSX today. Barrick Gold dropped 5.6 percent to C$27.09, the lowest level since November 2008. Alacer tumbled 7.7 percent to C$3.60 while Alamos sank 6.5 percent to C$12.45, its worst close since February 2010. Torex Gold slumped 7.7 percent to C$1.55, the lowest in almost a year.

A measure of Canadian energy companies lost 2.9 percent, its biggest drop since June. Oil fell 2.8 percent, the most in more than four months, to settle at $94.45 a barrel in New York.

U.S. stockpiles reached the highest level in 22 years, a report today showed.

Suncor, which extracts crude from the Athabasca oil sands, slid 3.3 percent to C$30.17. Canadian Natural Resources lost 3.4 percent to C$31.48. Encana Corp., Canada’s biggest natural gas producer, tumbled 4 percent to C$18.66.

SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. slid 0.9 percent to C$42. The country’s biggest engineering company said it removed C$120 million from its first-quarter backlog after losing a mine construction project.

Toronto-Dominion Bank lost 1.2 percent to C$83.43. Chief Executive Officer Edmund Clark, who led Canada’s second-biggest bank in a $25 billion U.S. expansion, will retire in November 2014 after a dozen years in the post. Clark will be succeeded by Bharat Masrani, currently head of U.S. operations, the bank said.

Canadian equities fell earlier this week as data on South Korean exports and China factory output trailed forecasts. China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, trailing only the U.S. The S&P/TSX is down 2.6 percent this month, worse than any of 23 developed markets, except for Greece and Portugal, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“The Canadian market has become a little bit orphaned,” Greg Taylor, a fund manager with Toronto-based Aurion Capital Management, said in a phone interview. His firm oversees about C$8 billion. “Canada has spent too much time tied to emerging markets, China’s growth story, and with that coming into question, it seems like the guys who bought Canada have taken the money out.”

US

By Lindsey Rupp and Nikolaj Gammeltoft

April 3 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell, dragging the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index down from a record, as financial and energy shares tumbled after oil plunged and worse-than-estimated data spurred concern over economic growth.

Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley dropped more than 2.7 percent as financial shares tumbled the most among 10 S&P 500 groups. Energy companies sank as oil prices slid the most in more than four months after inventories climbed. An S&P gauge of homebuilders fell 3.3 percent, with PulteGroup Inc. slipping 4.3 percent. Zynga Inc. rallied 15 percent after saying it will introduce real-money online gambling in the U.K.

The S&P 500 fell 1.1 percent to 1,553.69 at 4 p.m. in New York, for the biggest decline since Feb. 25. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 111.66 points, or 0.8 percent, to 14,550.35. The Russell 2000 Index dropped 1.7 percent to 918.71, extending its loss for the week to 3.5 percent. About 7.2 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, 14 percent above the three-month average.

“The two data points that came in below expectations have spooked the equity markets today,” Chad Morganlander, a Florham Park, New Jersey-based fund manager at Stifel Nicolaus & Co., said in a phone interview. His firm oversees about $130 billion of assets. “People are focused on Friday’s jobs report and the ADP number made investors more skittish.”

Companies boosted employment by 158,000 workers in March, figures from the Roseland, New Jersey-based ADP Research Institute showed today. The median forecast of 39 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 200,000 gain.

The data come before the non-farm payrolls report from the Labor Department on April 5, which may show employers hired a net 195,000 workers for the month, according to the median forecast of 87 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

The Institute for Supply Management’s index of U.S. non- manufacturing businesses, which covers almost 90 percent of the economy, fell to 54.4 in March from 56 in the prior month, the Tempe, Arizona-based group said today. The median forecast of 73 economists surveyed by Bloomberg was 55.5. Readings above 50 signal expansion. The survey covers industries ranging from utilities and retailing to housing, health care and finance.

U.S. benchmark equity gauges rose to their highest closes ever yesterday as concern over Europe’s debt crisis eased and U.S. factory orders topped forecasts. The S&P 500 rallied 10 percent in the first quarter, extending a recovery that has added more than $10 trillion of value to the world’s largest stock market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Investors will begin to focus on first-quarter earnings reports beginning next week, with Alcoa Inc. scheduled on April 8 to be the first company in the Dow to report results. Profits among S&P 500 companies are forecast to decline 1.9 percent for the period, for the first retreat since 2009, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. In January, analysts forecast earnings growth of 1.2 percent. Profit expanded by 8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, which measures the cost of using options as insurance against losses, jumped 11 percent to 14.21 today. The gauge, known as the VIX, is down 21 percent for the year.

Investors sold shares of companies most tied to economic growth, sending the Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index down 1.4 percent and the Dow Jones Transportation Index 1.3 percent lower. Intel Corp. declined 1.9 percent to $21.05 and General Electric Co. retreated 1.5 percent to $23.

The KBW Bank Index slumped 2 percent as all 24 of its members declined. Bank of America lost 2.8 percent to $11.81.

Morgan Stanley fell 2.7 percent to $21.11. JPMorgan Chase & Co. slipped 2.4 percent to $46.85.

Oil and metals led the S&P GSCI index of 24 commodities to a 2 percent drop, the largest decline since November. Crude registered its biggest drop of the year, falling 2.8 percent to $94.45 a barrel, after a government report showed that U.S. oil stockpiles climbed to the highest level in more than 22 years.

Gold futures sank 1.4 percent, to the lowest since June and on the brink of a bear market.

Energy companies declined 1.6 percent as a group. Exxon Mobil Corp. slumped 0.7 percent to $89.93 and Chevron Corp. tumbled 1 percent to $117.78.

Phillips 66, the largest U.S. independent refiner by revenue since its spinoff from ConocoPhillips last year, dropped 6.6 percent to $62.46. Tesoro Corp., the independent petroleum refiner based in San Antonio, slid 5 percent to $52.26 and Marathon Petroleum Corp. declined 4.8 to $81.39.

Refiners in the S&P 500 have tumbled more than 10 percent as a group this week, their worst slump since 2011, after the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rules aimed at cutting the sulfur in gasoline. The EPA said its standards will prevent as many as 2,400 premature deaths annually by 2030. The rules will require an additional $10 billion in infrastructure investment and $2.4 billion in annual operating costs, according to the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers trade group.

All of the 11 stocks in the S&P Supercomposite Homebuilding Index retreated. The ADP payroll report showed no jobs growth in the construction industry in March. The index has fallen 9.8 percent since reaching a five-year high on March 20. KB Home, the best-performing stock among U.S. homebuilders this year, fell 5.5 percent to $20.02 today. PulteGroup slipped 4.3 percent to $19.01.

The Bloomberg U.S. Airlines Index capped its biggest three- day decline since October 2011, falling an additional 2.1 percent today. Nine of the 10 companies in the index slid, as Delta Air Lines Inc. dropped 2.5 percent and United Continental Holdings Inc. erased 2.5 percent to $28.66.

ConAgra Foods Inc., the Omaha, Nebraska-based packaged- foods manufacturer, slipped 1.9 percent to $34.85 after it reported third-quarter earnings that missed analysts’ estimates.

Operating profit from consumer foods fell to $284.4 million from $331.3 million for the same period a year ago.

Global Payments Inc. lost 9.2 percent to $44.52. The bank- card processor said revenue was $578.7 million in the three months that ended in February, compared with the average analyst estimate of $581 million.

Zynga, which makes games for Facebook Inc.’s social network, rose 15 percent to $3.53. The company said the two new real-money games, called “ZyngaPlusPoker” and “ZyngaPlusCasino,” will be available to players in the U.K. from today. Facebook added 3.3 percent to $26.25.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

 

The characteristic of my nation is this transcendentalism,

this struggle to go beyond, this daring to tear the veil off the face of nature

and have at any risk, at any price,

a glimpse of the beyond.

Swami Vivekananda, 1863-1902

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

-Woody Allen, 1935-

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

April, the poet told us, is the cruelest month.  Yesterday, Joseph Epstein, writing in the Wall Street Journal, noted that April is also National Poetry Month.  He wrote, “Like so many of my rapidly diminishing generation, I walk around with lines and entire passages from the poetry of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, e.e. cummings, and others rattling around pleasantly in my head.  But nearly all the poetry written since the years those poets wrote doesn’t register, resonate, ring, do any of the elevating things that poetry is supposed to, and once indeed did, do….Years ago I wrote an essay on this subject called ‘Who Killed Poetry?,’ which stirred up beehives of poets in protest.  I suggested that the academicization of poetry did a lot to help kill it; I also concluded that too much poetry was in production, with Gresham’s Law relentlessly at work, in this instance the crappy driving out the second-rate.  I also concluded that so many people who drifted into the writing of poetry didn’t have very interesting minds: a family member dies, they saw a tree of unusual shape, a little-known Matisse painting excited them, so they take to their computers and trivialize the subject or experience by encasing it in a more or less complex contraption of verbal self-absorption currently called a poem.

I now wonder if quite as considerable a reason for the death of poetry is that the international attention span has been much reduced by so many fresh distractions, leaving fewer and fewer people who have the patience or intellectual curiosity to work out the rich complexity of a well-wrought poem – that is, if anyone is around who could actually produce one.  My main point is that if any of your children or grandchildren comes to you and declares a wish to become a poet, send that child directly off to bed without any dinner, and return to your place on the couch before the television set.”

Mr. Epstein is the author, with Frederic Raphael, of “Distant Intimacy: A Friendship in the Age of the Interne,” published this week by Yale University Press.  This op-ed is based in part on the book.

On this day in:

1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León landed in Florida during his quest for the legendary Fountain of Youth.

On April 2^nd, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

1917, Suffragist Jeanette Rankin is the first woman ever to be elected to Congress.

Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable. –Coco Chanel, Believing in Ourselves – The Wisdom of Women.

Photos of the Day –April 2^nd, 2013

Iranian women jump for a picture as they celebrate the ancient festival of Sizdeh Bedar, or public picnic day, in a park in western Tehran, Iran. Sizdah is the Persian word for thirteen, and spending the day outdoors with family on the thirteenth day of Farvardin, the first month of the Iranian calendar, has been a tradition since ancient times in Iran. Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

A Great Blue Heron prepares to swallow a fish at a wetland preserve near Delray Beach, Fla. For the past three months, birders have enjoyed nesting and baby season at Wakodahatchee Wetlands, a bird-watcher’s paradise. J Pat Carter/AP

Market Closes for April 2^nd, 2013

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	14662.01	+89.16    +0.61%
S&P 500	1570.25	+8.08    +0.52%
NASDAQ	3254.862	+15.689    +0.48%
TSX	12682.10	-13.04
		-0.10%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	12003.43	-131.59
		-1.08%
HANG  SENG	22367.82	+68.19
		+0.31%
SENSEX	19040.95	+176.20
		+0.93%
FTSE 100	6490.66	+78.92
		+1.23%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.874	1.848
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.503	2.495
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.8590	1.8314
U.S.   30 Year Bond	3.0999	3.0743

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98567	0.98357
US   $	1.01454	1.01670
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.30120	0.76852
US  $	1.28255	0.77970

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1576.17	1599.59
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	97.19	97.07
BRENT	111.03	111.52

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Lu Wang

April 2 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell as the biggest decline in gold prices in almost six weeks dragged raw-materials stocks lower, offsetting better-than-estimated data on U.S. factory orders.

Barrick Gold Corp. and Goldcorp Inc. declined at least 2.6 percent as the metal’s price slid 1.6 percent. Silvercorp Metals Inc. slumped 11 percent amid a report that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is probing the company over its battle with short sellers. Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. fell for a second day, losing 2.1 percent. Secure Energy Services Inc. climbed 4.9 percent as Raymond James Financial Inc. boosted the stock’s rating.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index fell 13.04 points, or 0.1 percent, to 12,682.10 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The benchmark gauge is up 2 percent this year. Trading volume was 11 percent above the 30-day average at this time of day.

“You’re walking this fine line,” Bill Harris, portfolio manager with Avenue Investment Management in Toronto, said in a phone interview. His firm manages about C$300 million ($296 million). “We’re not falling off the cliff, but we don’t have to raise interest rates, so the market cycle is still on.”

Gross domestic product and inflation numbers below analysts’ forecasts prompted Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney to say on Jan. 23 that interest-rate increases were “less imminent” and to add on March 6 that the current rate would be “appropriate for a period of time.”

The S&P/TSX gained as much as 0.2 percent earlier in the day, as orders placed with U.S. factories increased 3 percent in February. Demand was boosted by a pickup in orders for motor vehicles and commercial aircraft, a Commerce Department report showed today. The gain in bookings was the biggest in five months and exceeded the median forecast for a 2.9 percent rise in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Raw-materials producers declined 3 percent for the worst performance among 10 groups in the benchmark gauge. The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Materials Index of 60 stocks plunged 11 percent in the first quarter.

Producers of raw materials from copper to coal and gold have slid amid concerns China is settling into a slower growth path, mining companies face escalating costs and gold’s status as a safe haven is diminishing as the U.S. economy gains momentum.

Barrick Gold, the largest producer of the metal, declined 2.6 percent to C$28.71, its lowest level since November 2008.

Goldcorp dropped 3.4 percent to C$32.82. In New York, gold futures for June delivery fell 1.6 percent, the biggest decline since Feb. 20, to settle at $1,575.90.

Silvercorp tumbled 11 percent to C$3.54. The SEC issued a subpoena to the Chinese mining company on March 15 requesting documents relating to the allegations that the firm has overstated its production and the amount of precious minerals that its mines contained in China, The Globe and Mail reported.

Canadian Pacific slid 2.1 percent to C$126.34, contributing most to declines among industrial stocks and extending yesterday’s 2.7 percent drop.

Secure Energy advanced 4.9 percent to C$12.79. Andrew Bradford, an analyst with Raymond James, boosted his rating to outperform, an equivalent of buy, from market perform, citing the energy services company’s acquisition of Frontline Integrated Services Ltd.

Catamaran Corp., a drug-benefits manager, climbed 1.7 percent to C$55.09. The lack of an announcement from Cigna Corp. on a strategy for its pharmacy-benefits unit may be “good news,” Brian Tanquilut, an analyst with Jefferies & Co., wrote in a note.

Catamaran’s contract with Cigna’s HealthSpring PBM expires at the end of 2013. Cigna Chief Executive Officer David Cordani said in November the company expected to decide on the future of the unit by the first half of 2013.

US

By Lindsey Rupp and Nikolaj Gammeltoft

April 2 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to a record close, as concern over Europe’s debt crisis eased and factory orders topped forecasts.

Humana Inc. jumped 5.5 percent as health-care providers rallied the most among 10 groups in the S&P 500, after medical insurers won an increase in a key Medicare payment rate. Hertz Global Holdings Inc. added 6.9 percent as it forecast earnings above analysts’ estimates. Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. plunged 13 percent, the most in the S&P 500, after agreeing to buy BGC Partners Inc.’s bond platform. Hewlett-Packard Co. fell 5.2 percent as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. advised selling the shares.

The S&P 500 rose 0.5 percent to 1,570.25 at 4 p.m. in New York. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 89.16 points, or 0.6 percent, to 14,662.01, also reaching a record high. About 5.9 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, 6.6 percent below the three-month average.

“It’s an agonizingly slow economic recovery but it is a recovery,” Tom Mangan, who helps oversee about $4 billion as a money manager at James Investment Research Inc. in Xenia, Ohio, said in a phone interview. “The risk has so far not been that you are in the stock market, the risk is that you’re not in the stock market and that you don’t own enough stocks.”

U.S. equities fell yesterday as a report showed American manufacturing expanded less than forecast, after the S&P 500 climbed above its highest closing level reached in October 2007.

The index has yet to reach the all-time intraday high of 1,576.09. The S&P 500 rallied 10 percent in the first quarter, extending a recovery that has added more than $10 trillion of value to the world’s largest stock market. The Dow first passed its 2007 record on March 5.

U.S. factory orders rose in February, boosted by a pickup in demand for motor vehicles and commercial aircraft. The 3 percent gain in bookings, the biggest in five months, followed a revised 1 percent decline in January, a Commerce Department report showed. The median forecast of 64 economists in a Bloomberg survey called for a 2.9 percent rise.

In Europe, the Cypriot government completed talks on the terms for aid with the so-called troika of officials representing the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union. Cyprus was granted two extra years, to 2018, to implement measures linked to its bailout, government spokesman Christos Stylianides told reporters. The accord will be discussed at a euro working group meeting of finance officials on April 4.

“We get these little dust-ups whether it’s Cyprus or negative economic data, but then the market comes back to the thinking that the best game in town is U.S. equities and that’s what is driving stocks,” Dan Veru, chief investment officer at Palisade Capital Management LLC, said over the phone. The Fort Lee, New Jersey-based firm manages about $4 billion. “The U.S economy is growing, and relative to the rest of the world we’re far more stable.”

The bull market in equities entered its fifth year last month, with the S&P 500 more than doubling from its bottom in 2009, as corporate earnings topped estimates and the Federal Reserve carried out an unprecedented three rounds of bond purchases to spur the economy.

Companies begin releasing their first-quarter earnings next week, with Alcoa Inc. scheduled to announce results on April 8.

Earnings among S&P 500 companies are forecast to decline 1.9 percent for the period, for the first retreat since 2009, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. In January, analysts forecast earnings growth of 1.2 percent. Profit expanded by 8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, which measures the cost of using options as insurance against claims, fell 5.9 percent to 12.78 today. The gauge, known as the VIX, is down 29 percent for the year.

Health-care stocks advanced 1.4 percent as a group. Humana, the second-largest private Medicare insurer, climbed 5.5 percent to $79.11 after the government announced a decision to do away with a planned rate reduction. Instead, insurers will receive a 3.3 percent increase in the rate that determines the payments they get for running the government’s Medicare Advantage plans.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. advanced 4.7 percent to $61.74 and Aetna Inc. gained 3.7 percent to $54.30 on the decision.

Hertz, the Park Ridge, New Jersey-based car rental company, climbed 6.9 percent to $23.41 after giving a 2015 earnings outlook above analyst estimates. The company predicts earnings between $3.10 and $3.30 a share for 2015, compared with the average analyst estimate of $2.39.

Urban Outfitters Inc. added 3.8 percent to $39.87. The retailer said comparative retail net sales have climbed at a high single-digit pace so far during the first quarter.

Ford Motor Co. gained 0.9 percent to $13.01 after the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker announced its best monthly sales in its home market since 2007. Ford delivered 5.7 percent more light vehicles in March than a year earlier, beating estimates.

General Motors Co. added 0.5 percent to $27.93, as March sales expanded 6.4 percent. Analysts had estimated a 12 percent climb. Sales of GM’s Cadillac jumped almost 50 percent in the month while Chevrolet sales rose 0.5 percent.

Nasdaq OMX plunged 13 percent, the most since November 2008, to $27.91. The company will buy eSpeed, an electronic trading system for U.S. Treasuries, from BGC Partners for about $750 million in cash. Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s warned that Nasdaq’s debt rating may be lowered.

The deal gives the second-largest U.S. equity market a foothold in fixed income. Nasdaq will also issue about 15 million common shares over 15 years as part of the acquisition, pushing the potential value of the transaction to $1.23 billion, according to statements by the two companies. BGC Partners jumped 49 percent, its biggest gain since 1999, to $5.72.

Hewlett-Packard slipped 5.2 percent to $22.10. Goldman Sachs lowered its recommendation on the shares to sell from neutral. The brokerage said it remained cautious on the market for printers and servers.

The Bloomberg U.S. Airlines Index lost 5.7 percent, the biggest drop since June, as Delta Air Lines Inc. declined 8.1 percent to $14.94. The carrier’s March passenger revenue per available seat mile missed its estimate, the company said in a filing. Delta expects system capacity to be down by 2 to 3 percent in the latest quarter.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

 

The fact that there are so many men still alive in the world

shows that it is based not on the force of arms but on the force of truth or love.

Therefore, the greatest and most impeachable evidence of the success of this force

is to be found in the fact that, in spite of all the wars of the world,

it still lives on.

Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

In spite of everything, I still believe people are good

at heart.

-Ann Frank, 1929-1945

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7