January 2016 – Page 2 – Carolann Steinhoff

January 20, 2016

January 15, 2016 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Martin Luther King’s birthday today. The US markets will be closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Day.

From The Book of Holidays Around the World:

In 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She had defied segregation, which required blacks to sit in the rear of southern buses, and she was fined $14. The incident led to a boycott of the city’s buses, and Martin Luther King Jr, a minister who was born on January 15, 1929, was chosen to lead it. A year later, the city’s buses were integrated. King subsequently organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to promote civil rights and in 1964 won the Nobel Peace Prize. By the age of 39, when he was assassinated, he had inspired millions to share his dream of equality.

From Martin Luther King Jr:

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
-MLK, quoting Martin Luther

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
-The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
–The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
-Letter From Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

I said to my children, “I’m going to work and do everything that I can to see that you get a good education. I don’t ever want you to forget that there are millions of God’s children who will not and cannot get a good education and I don’t ever want you feeling that your are better than they are. For you will never be what you ought to be until they are what they ought to be.”
-MLK, January 7, 1968

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lunching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
-MLK, Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1962

www.thekingcenter.com

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

A section of ‘The Travellers’ by Cedric Le Borgne is seen suspended above St. James’s Square before being illuminated as part of the ‘Lumiere’ festival in London Thursday. The event, which takes place over four evenings in the capital, sees the illumination of famous landmarks and the display of artworks by international artists. Toby Melville/Reuters

Entomologist Anna Platoni poses with a blue morpho and pale owl butterflies on a floral hat made and designed by florist Emma Reynolds to celebrate the opening of ‘Butterflies in the Glasshouse’ at RHS Garden Wisley near Woking in Britain Friday. At the annual event, hundreds of butterflies from 40 different species, including the king swallowtail and malay lacewing, are released in the glasshouse from pupae. Luke Macgregor/Reuters

Market Closes for January 15^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	15988.08	-390.97 -2.39%

S&P 500	1880.29	-41.55 -2.16%

NASDAQ	4488.418	-126.585 -2.74%

TSX	12073.46	-262.57
		-2.13%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17147.11	-93.84
		-0.54%
HANG SENG	19520.77	-296.64
		-1.50%
SENSEX	24455.04	-317.93
		-1.28%
FTSE 100	5804.10	-114.13
		-1.93%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.148	1.231
CND. 30 Year Bond	1.980	2.053
U.S. 10 Year Bond	2.0347	2.0874
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8133	2.8869

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.68796	0.69688
US $	1.45358	1.43496

Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.58621	0.63043
US $	1.09125	0.91638

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1093.75	1088.40

Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	29.42	31.20

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Oliver Renick and Gerrit De Vynck

(Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks tumbled to the lowest in 2 1/2 years as a rally on Thursday proved short-lived amid a rout in energy companies and the longest losing streak in history for the nation’s currency.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Index declined 2.7 percent to 12,001.33 at 12:21 p.m. in Toronto, the lowest since June 2013. The rout erased a 1.4 percent surge yesterday. The gauge’s 7.9 percent plunge this year has wiped out about $150 billion in equity value.

“This is one of the largest peak to trough declines in oil prices in my lifetime,” Martin Pelletier, managing director and portfolio manager at TriVest Wealth Counsel in Calgary. “It is profound, it is material. It is something we can’t disregard.”

Canadian shares joined a worldwide rout that has given global stocks the worst start to a year on record. Oil’s slip below $30 a barrel triggered selling Friday after China’s equities slipped into a bear market despite state intervention. Currencies of resource-producing nations plunged.

Energy companies slid 4.1 percent to lead declines on Friday. Every stock in the 55-member group fell, with MEG Energy Corp. and Baytex Energy Corp. losing more than 10 percent.

Health-care shares lost 3 percent, led by drops in ProMetic LifeSciences Inc. and Concordia Healthcare Corp. The group that includes Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. has erased 13 percent so far this year, the worst sector in the S&P/TSX.

Gold companies, which rallied earlier this year as investors sought a haven, were among the few stocks to gain Friday as the precious metal added 1.1 percent.

The country’s currency weakened for an 11th straight day against its U.S. peer, the most since it broke its peg to the greenback in 1970, to trade at a 13-year low.

“When people are very negative and there’s a lot of emotion flowing, people tend to make irrational decisions,” Irwin Michael, portfolio manager at Toronto-based I.A. Michael Investment Counsel Ltd., said by phone. “We just have to sit tight, let this emotion work off.”

By Dani Burger

(Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks dropped, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index falling to its lowest level since Aug. 25, as the rout in oil persisted and data showing falling retail sales rekindled concern about the health of the economy.

The S&P 500 pared earlier losses that sent it 3.3 percent lower, while technology and energy stocks led losses today.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. fell 3.6 percent after agreeing to settle a U.S. probe into its handling of mortgage-backed securities, a move that will cut its fourth-quarter profit by about $1.5 billion. Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. lost at least 3.6 percent even after reporting quarterly earnings that topped projections. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. dropped 1.8 percent after saying it plans to close 269 stores.

The worst start to a year in U.S. equities on record has left them trading at the most attractive level versus bonds in a year based on one valuation measure. Dividend yields in the S&P 500 have climbed 30 basis points above the yield offered by 10- year Treasuries, a reversal from just last week when the payout from bonds was higher. The S&P 500’s multiple based on profits is also at a cheaper level. The gauge is trading at 16.8 times reported profits, a 8.6 percent discount to its average multiple over the last year.

The S&P 500 dropped 2.2 percent to 1,880.29 at 4 p.m. in New York, after earlier falling to the lowest level since April 2014. Volume on U.S. exchanges was 46 percent higher than the three-month average. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 391 points, or 2.4 percent, to 15,988.08, while the Nasdaq Composite index dropped to its lowest level since October 2014. U.S. equities markets are closed Monday for a federal holiday.

“The laser focus with the markets is on oil and weaker oil bleeds beyond the energy sector,” said Joe Quinlan, New York- based chief market strategist at U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. Quinlan, who recommends buying beaten down stocks that have growth potential like in defense spending, water infrastructure and global health care, also said, “This is one of these market moments when fear trumps all rationality. We will have to work through this panic period to move forward.”

Oil plummeted to fresh new lows, hovering around $29 a barrel, and the Shanghai Composite Index entered a bear market. Concern over China’s slowdown and deepening crude losses have dominated investor sentiment in 2016, prompting a 8 percent plunge in the S&P 500. Losses pushed Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist at Citigroup, to trim his 2016 target on the S&P 500 yesterday. The measure posted its third straight weekly decline.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index jumped 13 percent to 27.02. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX has surged 48 percent so far in 2016.

Corporate earnings may offer cues on the strength of the U.S. recovery, with seven S&P 500 companies posting results today. Analysts project earnings for firms on the gauge fell 6.7 percent in the fourth quarter, and downgrades to global profit growth haven’t been this bad in seven years.

Stock index futures extended declines earlier after reports showed retail sales decreased in December to cap the weakest year since 2009 and a Fed gauge of manufacturing in New York slumped. The 0.1 percent drop in retail sales matched the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The New York Fed’s Empire manufacturing index plunged to minus 19.37, lower than the minus 4 economists had forecast.

“The growth picture in the U.S. is getting cloudier, and the fact that the Fed tightened in a weak environment is certainly not helping,” said Krishna Memani, chief investment officer at Oppenheimer Funds Inc. in New York. “The data is clearly supporting how the markets are feeling at the moment.”

The Fed has stressed the pace of further rate increases will be gradual, but data-dependent. Traders are pricing in about a 30 percent chance of the central bank acting in March, while odds for an increase this month have stayed low since the December liftoff.

Intel Corp. dropped 9.1 percent after its quarterly sales forecast missed estimates.

BlackRock Inc. fell 4.3 percent after the world’s largest money manager reported fourth-quarter earnings that missed analysts’ estimates as rising expenses offset higher revenue.

Marathon Oil Corp. and Transocean Ltd. retreated 6.5 percent or more. All energy stocks in the S&P 500 except three declined today. Goldman Sachs said in a report that oil will turn into a new bull market before the year is out as the price rout shuts down production, putting the U.S. shale-oil boom into reverse in the second half of the year. As U.S. production slumps by 575,000 barrels a day, global oil markets will tip from surplus to deficit, the bank said in a report.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Be magnificent!

I have always fought not to project but to be myself.

To retain my own scale, which is a dot, but a vibrating dot, a pulsating dot that is what I’d like to be.

I would like to remain that pulsating dot

which can reach out to the whole world, to the universe.

Chandralekha

As ever,

Carolann

Wealth consists not in having great possession, but in having few wants.

-Epicetus, 55 AD – 135 AD

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

Portfolio Manager &

Senior Vice-President

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square,

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

January 14, 2016

January 14, 2016 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Here’s another article from Sunday’s (January 10, 1916) NY Times that is worth reading:

You Don’t Need More Free Time

-by Cristobal Young

AMERICANS work some of the longest hours in the Western world, and many struggle to achieve a healthy balance between work and life. As a result, there is an understandable tendency to assume that the problem we face is one of quantity: We simply do not have enough free time. “If I could just get a few more hours off work each week,” you might think, “I would be happier.”

This may be true. But the situation, I believe, is more complicated than that. As I discovered in a study that I published with my colleague Chaeyoon Lim in the journal Sociological Science, it’s not just that we have a shortage of free time; it’s also that our free time, in order to be satisfying, often must align with that of our friends and loved ones. We face a problem, in other words, ofcoordination. Work-life balance is not something that you can solve on your own.

Our study, which drew on data from more than 500,000 respondents to the Gallup Daily Poll, examined the day-to-day fluctuations and patterns in people’s emotions, week after week. Two facts about emotional well-being emerged — one that was intuitive, the other surprising.

The intuitive finding was that people’s feelings of well-being closely tracked the workweek. As measured by things such as anxiety, stress, laughter and enjoyment, our well-being is lowest Monday through Thursday. The workweek is a slog. Well-being edges up on Friday, and really peaks on Saturday and Sunday. We are, in a real sense, living for the weekend.

The surprising finding was that this is also true of unemployed people. We found that the jobless showed almost exactly the same day-to-day pattern in emotional well-being as working people did. Their positive emotions soared on the weekend, and dropped back down again on Monday.

It seems obvious why working people cherish the weekend: It’s a respite from work. But why is the weekend also so important to the unemployed?

The key to answering this question is to recognize that not all time is equal. Time is, in many ways, what sociologists call a “network good.”

Network goods are things that derive their value from being widely shared. Take your computer: Its value depends in large measure on how many other people also have a computer. This is because you use your computer as, among other things, a communication technology: for Internet access, email, Facebook and file sharing. When everyone you know has a computer, the technology is indispensable. But if you were the only person with a computer, its value would be limited.

Free time is also a network good. The weekend derives much of its importance from the fact that so many people are off work together.

To help demonstrate this, my colleague and I conducted a second study, this time using the American Time Use Survey, which tracks how much time people spend doing various activities. We found that the weekly cycle in well-being from our previous study was mirrored in the pattern of time that people spent with family and friends — which was roughly double on weekends what it was during the week. According to our calculations, this increase of social time on the weekend accounted for roughly half the spike in weekend well-being.

Again, this was the same for the jobless. Monday to Friday offers five days when the unemployed are off work by themselves, searching job ads, doing household chores and so on. While the jobless have “free time” during the week, their friends and family still have to go to work. The weekend is when the jobless fall back into sync with society.

The weekend, then, is not just a respite from work, but also gives similar relief from unemployment. It is a time when people can get what they’ve been missing: time together.

This conclusion points to a key feature of the work-life problem: You cannot get more “weekend” simply by taking an extra day off work yourself. If we were to take more time off as individuals, we would be likely to spend that time, as the jobless do, waiting for other people to finish work. We are stuck “at work,” in a sense, by the work schedules of our family and friends.

Over the past few years, many workplaces have looked for ways to create more flexibility in individual work schedules. There is no question that doing so has many benefits. But my research suggests that a disadvantage of these efforts is that they may lead us even further from a weekend-like system of coordinated social time. They threaten, ultimately, to exacerbate the decline in civic engagement and social contact known as the “bowling alone” problem.

The solution might be found in a form of constraint: more standardization of the time for work and the time for life.

( Cristobal Young is an assistant professor of sociology at Stanford University)

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

A flock of migrating starlings flies over the southern Israeli village of Tidhar Thursday. Tsafrir Abayov/AP

Tate employees pose for photographers with artist Phyllida Barlow’s ‘untitled: upturnedhouse’ sculpture at the Tate Modern in central London Thursday. Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

Market Closes for January 14^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16379.05	+227.64 +1.41%

S&P 500	1921.84	+31.56 +1.67%

NASDAQ	4615.004	+88.939 +1.97%

TSX	12336.03	+165.62
		+1.36%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17240.95	-474.68
		-2.68%
HANG SENG	19817.41	-117.47
		-0.59%
SENSEX	24772.97	-81.14
		-0.33%
FTSE 100	5918.23	-42.74
		-0.72%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.231	1.235
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.053	2.038
U.S. 10 Year Bond	2.0874	2.0927
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8869	2.8822

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.69688	0.69710
US $	1.43496	1.43450

Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.56150	0.64041
US $	1.08853	0.91867

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1088.40	1088.15

Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	31.20	30.44

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Dani Burger

(Bloomberg) — Carnage in Canadian stocks abated, at least for now, as the nation’s benchmark index reversed morning losses to post its best day of the year after crude prices held above $31 a barrel.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Index advanced 1.4 percent to 12,336.03 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, trimming its loss in 2016 to 5.2 percent. The index joined a rally in U.S. stocks after oil’s rebound from 12-year lows fueled speculation that equities declines had gone too far too fast this year.

Energy companies rallied 3.8 percent to lead advances on Thursday, while Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. reversed early losses to post a 5.4 percent gain and lead health-care shares higher. Oil companies Kelt Exploration Ltd. and Paramount Resources Ltd. gained as much as 13 percent.

Brent rebounded after an attack on OPEC member Indonesia. The global benchmark for crude had slid on Wednesday below $30 a barrel for the first time since April 2004 amid speculation that sanctions on Iran may be lifted by next money. Oil and gas producers were the worst performers last year, plummeting 26 percent.

Material stocks were the only to decline in the S&P/TSX today as the Bloomberg Commodities Index was little changed after dropping to the lowest since 1991 on Tuesday. Gold companies, which rallied earlier this year as investors sought a haven, took a hit as risk-on sentiment returned to the market. Yamana Gold Inc. and Alamos Gold Inc. both dropped 10 percent.

Canada’s resource-rich index was the second of seven countries to see its benchmark enter a bear market, capping a 20 percent slide on Jan. 7.

Air Canada tumbled 9.2 percent to its lowest level since October 2014. Raymond James downgraded the airline, citing a poor expansion strategy and it’s capital expenditure commitments.

By Joseph Ciolli

(Bloomberg) — Energy and health-care shares led a rebound in U.S. stocks, as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index followed the steepest selloff since September with its strongest gain in a month, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied more than 220 points.

Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. jumped at least 4.5 percent as energy companies in the S&P 500 soared to their largest single-day gain since August. Health-care companies had their strongest advance in more than four months to recover from their biggest slide since Sept. 29. The Nasdaq Composite Index had its best rally in a month, reversing direction today after approaching a 14-month low. Intel Corp. fell in after-hours trading following its quarterly results.

The S&P 500 rose 1.7 percent to 1,921.84 at 4 p.m. in New York, trimming in the final hour of trading a gain of as much as 2.3 percent. The Dow gained 227.64 points, or 1.4 percent, to 16,379.05. The Nasdaq Composite erased a 1.2 percent slide to close 2 percent higher. The Russell 2000 Index increased 1.5 percent after dropping into a bear market Wednesday. About 10 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 37 percent above the three-month average.

“This is the relief rally we’ve been waiting for,” said Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird, which oversees $110 billion. “Pessimism had grown to such a level that enough cash had been raised on the sidelines to sport at least a short-term rally. Better-than- expected earnings could be something for the bulls to grasp and provide this rebound some sustainability.”

The recovery accelerated earlier while Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard answered questions from reporters following a speech in which the policy maker, who was a vocal proponent of raising interest rates, sounded a more cautious tone. He said the latest decline in oil prices may delay the return of inflation to the central bank’s 2 percent target.

The S&P 500’s plunge yesterday triggered a technical signal that indicates it’s oversold. The gauge’s relative strength index, which measures whether gains or losses have been too fast to sustain, fell below 30, a threshold indicating a rebound may materialize. The last time the RSI was that low was on Aug. 25, when the S&P 500 hit a bottom and rallied 6.5 percent over the next three days.

U.S. stocks tumbled at the start of the year amid weakness in China’s equity and currency markets which fanned concerns a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy will spread. Investors are turning their attention to corporate earnings for a gauge on the stamina of U.S. growth.

Intel fell 3.7 percent as of 4:41 p.m. after the chipmaker predicted first-quarter sales that will fall short of some estimates, held back by the continued slump in demand for personal computers. Fourth-quarter profit exceeded analysts’ estimates, while sales were nearly in line. Citigroup Inc. and BlackRock Inc. are due to report results tomorrow. Analysts estimate profits for S&P 500 members fell 6.7 percent last quarter.

“We’ll have to digest all these earnings numbers and then we’ll have a clearer picture, but if you look around the world, there’s not many positive drivers,” said Benno Galliker, a trader at Luzerner Kantonalbank AG. “Play it safe, that’s the message at the moment.”

The recent equity selloff is an “emotional response,” obscuring expansion in both the American economy and corporate profits, Abby Joseph Cohen, president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Global Markets Institute, said today. The fair value for Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is 2,100, she said.

The main U.S. equity index has declined 9.8 percent from its record set in May, and is 2.9 percent above the bottom of an August swoon, which was also triggered by anxiety over the impact of China’s weakness on worldwide growth. The gauge has slumped since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates last month for the first time since 2006.

Before St. Louis Fed President Bullard’s comments today, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren yesterday said estimates for U.S. economic growth are falling, putting the central bank’s projected path for rate increases at risk, while the Chicago Fed’s Charles Evans said he’s nervous that inflation expectations are lower than policy makers think.

The Fed official may have a case. A report today showed the cost of imported goods excluding fuels declined 3.4 percent last year, the biggest annual decrease since records began in 2001. Separate data showed applications for unemployment benefits unexpectedly increased last week, a sign labor market momentum may be starting to cool.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index slipped 5 percent to 23.95. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX is up about 32 percent this month, on track for the most since a record jump in August.

All 10 of the S&P 500’s main industries gained today, with energy, health-care and technology companies increasing at least 2 percent. Energy shares rose 4.5 percent, the most since Aug. 27, for the second gain in the last seven days as crude oil rallied more than 2 percent.

Emblematic of today’s turnaround, pipeline operator Williams Cos. lead all gainers with a 34 percent rally, its largest in 13 years. It was the S&P 500’s biggest loser yesterday, with its biggest loss since 2002. Exxon Mobil posted its strongest gain since August, and Transocean Ltd. added 7.6 percent.

The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index rallied 4 percent after slipping 18 percent over the previous 10 sessions. Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. climbed more than 5.7 percent. Amgen Inc. surged 5.3 percent to help drive health-care shares’ biggest gain in four months, a day after the steepest drop since Oct. 6.

Consumer discretionary stocks rose, after their biggest drop in four months, with Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. and CBS Corp. increasing more than 3.7 percent. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. extended its two-day rally to more than 12 percent after assuring investors that it can rebound from its food-safety crisis. Amazon.com Inc. climbed 1.9 percent, after losing 5.8 percent yesterday.

Best Buy Co. and GoPro Inc. tumbled. The electronics retailer fell as much as 12 percent and closed with the biggest retreat in a year after reporting its third drop in holiday sales in four years, hurt by sluggish demand for mobile phones and a broader slump in the industry.

GoPro plummeted 15 percent to its lowest since going public in June 2014, after news of disappointing holiday sales and job cuts renewed concerns the action-camera company is too focused on a single suite of products.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

I see these things with an intense joy,

and while I observe, there is no observer, only a beauty almost like love.

For an instant, I am absent, myself and my problems, my anxieties, my troubles: nothing but this wonder exists.

Krishnamurti

As ever,

Carolann

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 4 BC-65 AD

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

Portfolio Manager &

Senior Vice-President

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square,

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

January 14, 2016

January 13, 2016 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

This was in the New York Times on Sunday, January 10, 2016 – it’s worth the read:

Be Happy: Think About Your Death

-by Arthur C. Brooks

Want a better 2016? Try thinking more about your impending demise.

Years ago on a visit to Thailand, I was surprised to learn that Buddhist monks often contemplate the photos of corpses in various stages of decay. The Buddha himself recommended corpse meditation. “This body, too,” students were taught to say about their own bodies, “such is its nature, such is its future, such its unavoidable fate.”

Paradoxically, this meditation on death is intended as a key to better living. It makes disciples aware of the transitory nature of their own physical lives and stimulates a realignment between momentary desires and existential goals. In other words, it makes one ask, “Am I making the right use of my scarce and precious life?”

In fact, most people suffer grave misalignment. In a 2004 article in the journal Science, a team of scholars, including the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, surveyed a group of women to compare how much satisfaction they derived from their daily activities. Among voluntary activities, we might expect that choices would roughly align with satisfaction. Not so. The women reported deriving more satisfaction from prayer, worship and meditation than from watching television. Yet the average respondent spent more than five times as long watching TV as engaging in spiritual activities.

If anything, this study understates the misalignment problem. The American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, in 2014, the average American adult spent four times longer watching television than “socializing and communicating,” and 20 times longer on TV than on “religious and spiritual activities.” The survey did not ask about hours surfing the web, but we can imagine a similar disparity.

This misalignment leads to ennui and regret. I’m reminded of a friend who was hopelessly addicted to British crossword puzzles (the ones with clues that seem inscrutable to Americans, such as, “The portly gentleman ate his cat, backwards”). A harmless pastime, right? My friend didn’t think so — he was so racked with guilt after wasting hours that he consulted a psychotherapist about how to quit. (The advice: Schedule a reasonable amount of time for crosswords and stop feeling guilty.)

While few people share my friend’s interest, many share his anxiety. Millions have resolved to waste less time in 2016 and have already failed. I imagine some readers of this article are filled with self-loathing because they just wasted 10 minutes on a listicle titled “Celebrities With Terrible Skin.”

Some might say that this reveals our true preferences for TV and clickbait over loved ones and God. But I believe it is an error in decision making. Our days tend to be an exercise in distraction. We think about the past and future more than the present; we are mentally in one place and physically in another. Without consciousness, we mindlessly blow the present moment on low-value activities.

The secret is not simply a resolution to stop wasting time, however. It is to find a systematic way to raise the scarcity of time to our consciousness.

Even if contemplating a corpse is a bit too much, you can still practice some of the Buddha’s wisdom resolving to live as if 2016 were your last year. Then remorselessly root out activities, small and large, that don’t pass the “last-year test.”

There are many creative ways to practice this test. For example, if you plan a summer vacation, consider what would you do for a week or two if this were your last opportunity. With whom would you reconnect and spend some time? Would you settle your soul on a silent retreat, or instead spend the time drunk in Cancún, Mexico?

If this year were your last, would you spend the next hour mindlessly checking your social media, or would you read something that uplifts you instead? Would you compose a snarky comment on this article, or use the time to call a friend to see how she is doing? Hey, I’m not judging here.

Some might think that the last-year test is impractical. As an acquaintance of mine joked, “If I had one year to live, I’d run up my credit cards.” In truth, he probably wouldn’t. In a new paper in the science journalPLOS One, two psychologists looked at the present value of money when people contemplated death. One might assume that when reminded of death, people would greatly value current spending over future spending. But that’s not how it turned out. Considering death actually made respondents less likely to want to blow money now than other scenarios did.

Will cultivating awareness of the scarcity of your time make you grim and serious? Not at all. In fact, there is some evidence that contemplating death makes you funnier. Two scholars in 2013 published an academic paper detailing research in which they subliminally primed people to think about either death or pain, and then asked them to caption cartoons. Outside raters found the death-primed participants’ captions to be funnier.

There’s still time to rethink your resolutions. Forget losing weight and saving money. Those are New Year’s resolutions for amateurs. This year, improve your alignment, and maybe get funnier in the process: Be fully alive now by meditating on your demise. Happy 2016!

Arthur C. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing opinion writer.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Participants in a small local event pose for photographs in a sunflower field in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday. Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

A man walks in front of a cosmetics ad in Tokyo Wednesday. Eugene Hoshiko/AP

Market Closes for January 13^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16151.41	-364.81 -2.21%

S&P 500	1890.28	-48.40 -2.50%

NASDAQ	4526.066	-159.853 -3.41%

TSX	12170.41	-203.49
		-1.64%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17715.63	+496.67
		+2.88%
HANG SENG	19934.88	+223.12
		+1.13%
SENSEX	24854.11	+172.08
		+0.70%
FTSE 100	5690.97	+31.73
		+0.54%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.235	1.262
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.038	2.048
U.S. 10 Year Bond	2.0927	2.1102
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8822	2.8877

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.69710	0.70107
US $	1.43450	1.42640

Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.56150	0.64041
US $	1.08853	0.91867

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1088.15	1085.40

Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	30.48	30.44

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Dani Burger

(Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks resumed declines, after posting yesterday the first daily advance of 2016, as selloffs in global equities and commodities intensified.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index sank 1.6 percent to 12,170.41 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The benchmark gauge gained yesterday, halting a nine-day losing streak.

Financial and energy stocks in the S&P/TSX contributed most to declines. Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank dropped at least 1.7 percent. Paramount Resources Ltd. sank 9.6 percent. Brent slid closer to $30 a barrel following a U.S. government report that showed crude and fuel stockpiles climbed.

Global equities have struggled in 2016 as turmoil in China’s equity and currency markets at the start of the year fueled concern about global growth. Canada’s resource-rich benchmark was the second of seven countries to see its benchmark enter a bear market, capping a 20 percent slide on Jan. 7.

Material stocks advanced as investors flocked to gold as a haven. Barrick Gold Corp. climbed 2.2 percent.

The consumer discretionary sector also gained. Shaw Communications Inc. led the sector, advancing 5.3 percent. Corus Entertainment Inc. agreed to buy the company’s media business for C$2.65 billion in cash and stock, helping Shaw finance its wireless expansion.

Among other stocks moving on company news, Magna International Inc. gained 2.3 percent. The auto parts-maker reported a 2016 sales forecast in-line with analyst estimates.

By Joseph Ciolli

(Bloomberg) — The 2016 selloff in U.S. stocks intensified, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling more than 360 points, as consumer shares led the latest rout in a turbulent start to the year that has erased at least $1.6 trillion from equities.

An early rally evaporated for a third day as declines of at least 5.8 percent in Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc. paced the selloff. Banks sank to their lowest close since May 2014, and energy companies fell as crude wiped out a 4 percent surge after data showed stockpiles continued to grow. Express Scripts Holding Co. lost 6.4 percent and biotechnology companies tumbled to weigh on the health-care group.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slid 2.5 percent to 1,890.28 at 4 p.m. in New York, its lowest close since Sept. 29. The gauge fell past 1,900, a level it’s closed below only four times in the past 14 months. The Dow fell 364.81 points, or 2.2 percent, to 16,151.41, and the Nasdaq Composite Index sank 3.4 percent, the most in more than four months. The Russell 2000 Index closed in a bear market, sinking 3.3 percent to its lowest since 2013, and down 22 percent from a record set in June.

“With energy selling off, we’ve lost a leg of leadership, which is made worse because we’ve already been seeing risk-off,” said Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist at JonesTrading Institutional Services LLC in New York. “The FANG gang is making new lows, and small-caps are continuing to get pummeled. What you’re seeing today is some pretty broad-based weakness.”

It was another volatile session following yesterday’s whipsaw action in which the S&P 500 capped its first back-to- back advance in three weeks. The Dow on Wednesday traveled more than 470 points from the session high to low.

Concern that turbulence in China’s stocks and currency will spread to the global economy just as the Federal Reserve is increasing borrowing costs has spurred declines in markets in 2016. The S&P 500 posted its worst-ever start to a year, sliding 6 percent last week. The benchmark has declined 11 percent from its record set in May, and is just 1.2 percent above the bottom of an August swoon, which was also sparked by anxiety over the impact of China’s weakness on worldwide growth.

According to JPMorgan Chase & Co., this year’s tumble is at least partly attributable to robotic selling by quantitative investors who were forced to rebalance their funds when stocks and bonds both fell in January.

“While this implies there is less risk of a sudden market crash vs. August, it is not imminent that these strategies will start buying equities,” wrote Marko Kolanovic, the JPMorgan strategist. “Moreover, if volatility keeps on rising, there could be more selling to come.”

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index rose 12 percent Wednesday to 25.22. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX is up 39 percent in January, on track for its biggest monthly gain since August’s 135 percent jump. About 9.8 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 36 percent above the three-month average.

“If this week has shown us anything, it’s that no gain is safe,” said Thomas Garcia, head of equity trading at Thornburg Investment Management Inc. in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “Equities have just been out of favor early on this year. We’ve been taking our cues from what’s been going on from China, but people seem to be getting numb to that.”

The Fed’s Beige Book survey of conditions released today said the economy expanded across most of the country in the past six weeks as the job market showed strength that’s failing to stoke broad wage pressures. The report underscores the challenge facing policy makers heading into their meeting later this month: The labor market is strengthening without triggering signs of higher wages or inflation more broadly.

Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said today estimates for U.S. growth are falling, putting the central bank’s projected path for rate increases at risk. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said in comments also today he backs an “even shallower path” for future rate increases than his colleagues.

After this year’s selloff brought S&P 500 valuations down to levels last seen in 2014, investors will be turning their attention to a key determinant of stock prices — corporate earnings. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Intel Corp., and Citigroup Inc. are scheduled to post quarterly results this week. Analysts estimate profits for S&P 500 members fell 6.7 percent last quarter.

“Corporate earnings could provide some support, especially if the energy and commodities sectors are not as miserable as everyone expects,” said Heinz-Gerd Sonnenschein, a strategist at Deutsche Postbank AG in Bonn, Germany.

Amid the carnage Wednesday, all of the S&P 500’s 10 main industries fell, with consumer discretionary and health-care shares the worst performers. Eight of the groups lost at least 1.7 percent. Utilities were little changed.

“There’s big-time negative sentiment in the market right now,” said Mark Kepner, an equity trader at Themis Trading LLC in Chatham, New Jersey. “There’s a lot of growth uncertainty in general. Without enough news to make it go higher, and with negative sentiment, we started selling off.”

Consumer discretionary companies in the benchmark gauge slipped 3.4 percent, the biggest drop since the August selloff. BorgWarner Inc. led with a 9.5 percent decline after providing 2016 sales guidance that fell short of previous estimates. Netflix lost 8.6 percent, the most since October 2014, while Ford Motor Co. and Delphi Automotive Plc slumped at least 5 percent. Home Depot Inc. dropped 4.8 percent, the worst in the Dow, and its steepest retreat since 2011.

The S&P 500 health-care index fell 2.9 percent to its lowest since September amid losses in drugmaker shares. AbbVie Inc. and Celgene Corp. decreased more than 5.6 percent. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index slid 5.3 percent to a 14-month low and its ninth loss in 10 days. The gauge is down 18 percent over the period.

Express Scripts posted its steepest drop in three years after health insurer Anthem Inc., its biggest client, threatened to ditch it for a competitor unless the pharmacy benefit manager can deliver $3 billion a year more in savings on drug costs.

Industrial companies in the S&P 500 lost 2.3 percent, snapping a two-day gain. The Dow Jones Transportation Average lost 3.7 percent, the most in almost two years to its lowest since October 2013. Norfolk Southern Corp. and Union Pacific Corp. fell more than 3.1 percent, while Boeing Co. decreased 2.9 percent.

CSX Corp., the largest rail carrier in the eastern U.S., fell 5.7 percent to its lowest level since February 2013 as demand for rail cargo is expected to drop this year in what Chief Executive Officer Mike Ward called a “freight recession.”

Williams Cos. plunged nearly 18 percent, the steepest since 2002 and the most among energy companies today as credit downgrades and slumping energy prices exacerbated concerns over the $38 billion deal for the pipeline company to be bought by Energy Transfer Equity LP. Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. tumbled more than 8.6 percent.

In an ironic twist, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., the worst non-energy performer in the S&P 500 during the last three months, was the day’s second-best performer. The shares rose 5.9 percent, the most since July after executives told analysts at an investor conference that it can win back the trust of customers and restore its industry-leading restaurant margins by 2017.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

One must become poor inwardly

or then there is no seeking, no asking,

no desire – nothing!

It is inward poverty

that can see the truth of a life in which

there is not conflict at all.

Krishnamurti

As ever,

Carolann

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know

to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

-Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

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

Portfolio Manager &

Senior Vice-President

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square,

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

January 12, 2016

January 12, 2016 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

THE POEM:
The Bright Fields
-by RS Thomas

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

President Obama’s last State of the Union speech tonight at 9 PM EST, 6 PM PST.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Archaeologists from the University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit uncover Bronze Age wooden houses, preserved in silt, from a quarry near Peterborough, Britain, Tuesday. Archaeologists said they had discovered what were believed to be the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain, providing an extraordinary insight into prehistoric life from 3,000 years ago. The settlement of large circular wooden houses, built on stilts, collapsed in a fire and plunged into a river where it was preserved in silt, leaving them in pristine condition, Historic England said. Peter Nicholls/Reuters

A car covered with ice remains stranded on the waterfront in Hamburg, N.Y., Tuesday. The owner left his Mitsubushi Lancer parked overnight outside a restaurant on Sunday. By the next day, spray from Lake Erie had encased it in ice. Lindsay DeDario/Reuters

Market Closes for January 12^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16516.22	+117.65 +0.72%

S&P 500	1940.18	+16.51 +0.86%

NASDAQ	4685.918	+47.929 +1.03%

TSX	12368.73	+49.48
		+0.40%

International Markets

Market

Index

Close

Change

NIKKEI

17218.96

-479.00

-2.71%

HANG

SENG

19711.76

-176.74

-0.89%

SENSEX

24682.03

-143.01

-0.58%

FTSE 100

5929.24

+57.41

+0.98%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.262	1.324
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.048	2.094
U.S. 10 Year Bond	2.1102	2.1754
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8877	2.9690

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.70107	0.70359
US $	1.42640	1.42128

Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.54833	0.64586
US $	1.08548	0.92125

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1085.40	1100.75

Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	30.44	31.41

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

(Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rallied in the final hour of trading to snap the longest losing streak since 2002, as gains from financials outweighed declines by raw-materials and energy producers.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index closed 0.4 percent higher at 12,373.90, after a seesaw trading day. The equity gauge rose as much as 1.1 percent and lost as much as 1 percent on Tuesday. Toronto-Dominion Bank and Royal Bank of Canada advanced more than 0.7 percent to lead the nation’s lenders higher. Canadian National Railway Co. rose a third straight day.

Eldorado Gold Corp. led resource-producers lower, as a Bloomberg gauge of global commodities touched a low of at least 1991. Energy companies also slid, as oil briefly tumbled below $30 a barrel.

Equities worldwide have tumbled to start the year as concern that a slowdown in China will thwart worldwide growth returned, after the nation unexpectedly set lower reference rates for its currency.

The MSCI All-Country World Index of developed and developing markets snapped a six-day slide while the S&P 500 rebounded from a mid-day drop. China’s central bank had earlier stabilized markets after repeatedly intervened in the offshore market. Crude posted a fresh 12-year low, tumbling 2.5 percent to close at $30.64 after touching $29.93 earlier.

Canada’s resource-rich benchmark equity gauge lost 7.4 percent during a nine-day slide to start 2016. Canada was the second Group of 7 country to see its benchmark enter a bear market, capping a 20 percent slide Jan. 7, after Germany’s DAX Index did in August.

Eldorado Gold Corp. sank 19 percent, the biggest drop since December 2008, after the gold mining company suspended activities at its mining project in Greece after a prolonged battle to develop the mine.

The S&P/TSX Gold Index lost 2.5 percent as the metal retreated for a third straight day. Gold producers had rallied at the start of the year as investors sought a haven from the market turmoil in China. Goldcorp Inc. lost 2.6 percent Tuesday.

By Joseph Ciolli

(Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose in late-afternoon trading for a second day, paced by technology and health-care shares as China’s efforts to shore up its currency bolstered optimism that it can tame the turmoil that’s rattled global financial markets.

Equities have been whipsawed in the first two sessions following their steepest weekly decline in four years, with early rallies evaporating only to see stocks storm back in the final hour of trading. Commodity producers recovered losses and tech shares surged, with Intel Corp. and Apple Inc. pacing the group for a second straight day. Energy companies erased a drop of as much as 2.3 percent as crude trimmed its slide.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index increased 0.8 percent to 1,938.68 at 4 p.m. in New York, the strongest gain in two weeks and the first back-to-back advance since Dec. 23. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 117.65 points, or 0.7 percent, to 16,516.22. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 1 percent to halt its longest losing streak since 2008. The Russell 2000 Index added 0.3 percent after flirting with a bear market for a second day.

“We’re slowly but surely finding a bottom in this selloff,” said Tim Ghriskey, who helps oversee $1.5 billion as managing director and chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management. “There’s some talk out there that this blowout in energy provides some technical support, and that this is a short-term bottom forming. The pullback really wasn’t based on much new news.”

Worries that turbulence in China’s stocks and currency will spread to the global economy has spurred declines in markets in 2016 — the S&P 500 posted its worst-ever start to a year, sliding 6 percent last week. China’s measures today to defend the yuan helped ease investor concerns about a hard landing in the nation’s economy, sparking a record surge in Hong Kong’s money-market rates and deterring bearish speculators.

The main U.S. equity benchmark’s tumble to start 2016 has left it 9 percent below its all-time high set in May after coming within 1 percent of the record as recently as November. It is 3.8 percent above the bottom of an August swoon, which was also sparked by anxiety over the impact of China’s weakness on worldwide growth.

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart said yesterday a global selloff in stock markets is unlikely to affect the U.S. economy, and he favors continued tightening of monetary policy this year. Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker said today the current strength of the economy, particularly “robust” consumer spending growth, “is a powerful argument” for higher rates.

Investors will also be turning attention to corporate earnings, after Alcoa Inc. unofficially kicked off earnings season yesterday. The aluminum producer fell 9 percent, the most in more than four years after its sales last quarter dropped 18 percent, and the company reported a net loss as falling aluminum prices dulled the impact of cost-cutting efforts.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Intel and Citigroup Inc. are among companies scheduled to post their quarterly results this week. Analysts estimate profits for S&P 500 members fell 6.7 percent last quarter.

Earnings season will “calm fears” in the U.S. equity market, Adam Parker, chief U.S. equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, wrote today in a client note. Expectations have been lowered so much for sectors like energy and raw-materials that they “should be cleared,” considering the lack of “large headwinds from macro factors,” he wrote.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index fell 7.5 percent Tuesday to 22.47, adding to yesterday’s 10 percent drop after a 48 percent jump last week to a three-month high. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX remains on track for its biggest monthly gain since August’s 135 percent jump. About 9 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 26 percent above the three-month average.

Following the afternoon rally, eight of S&P 500’s 10 main industries climbed today, with technology, health-care and consumer discretionary shares increasing at least 1 percent. Utilities and phone companies fell.

Apple rose 1.5 percent, capping its first three-day advance since Nov. 20. Intel added 1.9 percent for its strongest back- to-back climb also since Nov. 20 before its earnings report on Thursday. Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. gained 6.3 percent, the most since August, after reaffirming its full-year sales and profit expectations following floods in India last quarter.

Anthem Inc. and Aetna Inc. added more than 3.8 percent to boost the health-care group after the health insurers said profit will probably increase this year, ahead of presentations at a JPMorgan health-care conference. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index rose 1.5 percent, snapping its longest losing streak since September, after the gauge wiped out an earlier 2 percent slide.

Consumer discretionary shares advanced for a second day. Starbucks Corp. added 2.8 percent amid plans to accelerate its expansion in China, while Walt Disney Co. rose 1.5 percent after yesterday ending an eight-day skid.

Energy companies in the benchmark closed 0.4 percent higher, their first gain in five sessions, even as crude oil sank 3.1 percent with West Texas Intermediate crude reaching its lowest settlement since 2003. The resource was down for a seventh straight day, slipping 18 percent over the period. Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. increased at least 1.7 percent, while Valero Energy Corp. advanced 3.1 percent.

Raw-materials companies were little changed, despite the price of copper sliding to the lowest since 2009. The decline came as Barclays Plc cut its price forecast and said recent data makes a recovery in the year’s first half less likely in China, the world’s biggest user. Freeport-McMoRan decreased 4.6 percent to the lowest level since December 2000, after falling as much as 15 percent.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

We ask ourselves

is it possible to break through this heavy conditioning of centuries immediately

and not enter into another conditioning – to be free,

so that the mind can be altogether new, sensitive,

alive, aware, intense, capable?

Krishnamurti

As ever,

Carolann

I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.

-Louisa May Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, 1832-1888

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

Portfolio Manager &

Senior Vice-President

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square,

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

January 11, 2016

January 11, 2016 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

The very first rock concert I ever attended as a teenager growing up in Montreal was David Bowie’s at the Montreal Forum. It remains in my mind as the best concert I’ve ever been to because the music and the choreography truly were an indelible experience. This was post Space Oddity and Ziggy Stardust releases and he was full on glam. Just as the concert was about to begin, the lights went out so it was pitch black in the stadium and all you could hear was his incredible voice reverberating throughout the room, singing the opening lines, “Ground Control to Major Tom, Ground Control to Major Tom…” Then the ceiling became sparkling with stars and a glittering spaceship started to slowly descend from the ceiling as the music and lyrics became ever louder and more pronounced. At the crescendo, the spaceship landed on the stage, a door opened and David Bowie emerged with microphone in hand and stepped onto the stage, whereupon the lights went on (the musicians had been playing in the dark) and the spaceship ascended back into “space.” It was amazing.

When I hit the tread mill early this morning and turned on the TV to watch the news, I was stunned by the news of his death. I’d made a mental note to pick up his latest CD, Lazarus, which was released last week on his birthday, without even a single thought as to why the title was the name of a person who was, according to the bible, a close and beloved friend of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Jesus raised from the dead. A very profound and moving farewell finale for his family, friends and fans.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

A woman with a Ziggy Stardust tattoo visits a mural of David Bowie in Brixton, south London, Monday. David Bowie, a music legend who used daringly androgynous displays of sexuality and glittering costumes to frame legendary rock hits ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and ‘Space Oddity,’ has died of cancer. Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

Japanese women wearing kimonos walk as they attend a Coming of Age Day celebration ceremony at an amusement park in Tokyo on Monday. According to a government announcement, more than 1.2 million men and women who were born in 1995 marked the coming of age this year, a decrease of approximately 50,000 from last year. Yuya Shino/Reuters

Market Closes for January 11^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16398.57	+52.12 +0.32%

S&P 500	1923.67	+1.64 +0.09%

NASDAQ	4637.988	-5.643 -0.12%

TSX	12319.25	-126.20
		-1.01%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17697.96	-69.38
		-0.39%
HANG SENG	19888.50	-565.21
		-2.76%
SENSEX	24825.04	-109.29
		-0.44%
FTSE 100	5871.83	-40.61
		-0.69%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.324	1.297
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.094	2.061
U.S. 10 Year Bond	2.1754	2.1156
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.9690	2.9094

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.70359	0.70554
US $	1.42128	1.41735

Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.54343	0.64791
US $	1.08594	0.92086

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1100.75	1101.85

Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	31.41	33.16

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

(Bloomberg) — Energy’s drag on Canadian stocks showed no signs of abating as the nation’s benchmark equity gauge slumped a ninth straight day, the longest losing streak since 2002.

Canadian equities have lost 7.4 percent during this period with the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index failing to post a positive trading day in 2016. Crude futures in New York tumbled to a 12-year low.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley projected Brent oil may slump to as low as $20 a barrel on strength in the dollar. Brent dropped 6.7 percent to $31.32 a barrel in London. Bank of America Corp. cut its average 2016 Brent forecast to $46 a barrel from $50.

“Risk appetite will not return until we start to see crude carve out a bottom,” said David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc., in a note to clients.

The S&P/TSX fell 1 percent to 12,319.25 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The gauge capped a 20 percent plunge from its September 2014 record on Jan. 7, hitting a magnitude in declines commonly defined as a bear market. Canada was the second Group of 7 country to see its benchmark enter a bear market, after Germany’s DAX Index did in August.

Energy producers sank 2.7 percent. The group, which accounts for about 20 percent of the broader index, was the worst-performing sector in the S&P/TSX last year.

Suncor Energy Inc. fell 4 percent to a December 2014 low, after extending its hostile offer for Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. Canadian Oil Sands fell 3.2 percent. Suncor Chief Executive Officer Steve Williams said in a statement he was “encouraged” by the number of shares tendered to the deal.

First Quantum Minerals Ltd. sank 9.4 percent to lead losses among base metals producers as copper prices reached a fresh six-year low on concern the economic slowdown is worsening in China. Freeport-McMoRan Inc., the top publicly traded copper producer, plunged as much as 20 percent in New York.

The S&P/TSX Gold Index lost 3.7 percent as the price of the metal retreated after posting the best week since August. Gold producers had rallied at the start of the year as investors sought a haven from the market turmoil in China. Barrick Gold Corp. lost 2.7 percent.

By Joseph Ciolli

(Bloomberg) — The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed little changed in whipsaw trading, after a late-afternoon rebound paced by Apple Inc. and Intel Corp. offset a selloff in commodity shares driven by anxiety that China’s slowdown will spread.

Apple and Intel bounced at least 1.6 percent after falling more than 7.8 percent last week. Macy’s Inc. soared 8.2 percent, the most in two years, amid pressure to pursue real-estate deals. Miner Freeport-McMoRan Inc. sank 20 percent while Chevron Corp. dropped 1.7 percent as crude and copper tumbled. Biotechnology shares extended their longest rout in three months to drag down the health-care group. Alcoa Inc. slipped in after- hours trading despite earnings that exceeded estimates.

The S&P 500 rose 0.1 percent to 1,923.67 at 4 p.m. in New York, after falling as much as 1.1 percent. The gauge surged 1.3 percent in the final hour to erase a retreat in the first session after its worst weekly decline since 2011. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 52.12 points, or 0.3 percent, to 16,398.57. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 0.1 percent to fall for an eighth day, the longest streak since 2008. The Russell 2000 Index slipped 0.4 percent to the precipice of a bear market.

“China may become less of a burning issue as the scenario has played out, and as the country gives some indications of managing the economic situation,” said Richard Sichel, chief investment officer at Philadelphia Trust Co., which oversees $2 billion. “As the attention moves away from China and towards earnings season, that could create a better tone for the market.”

Technology shares shook off a 0.7 percent drop in afternoon trading to close 0.6 percent higher, while consumer companies added to earlier gains during the final hour to climb more than 0.8 percent. Banks also wiped out an intraday decline that took the KBW Bank Index down as much as 0.9 percent. The gauge closed Friday at its lowest in nearly a year.

Alcoa fell 1.3 percent as of 5:14 p.m., even as the aluminum producer reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings after the markets closed, as demand grows for components made from the metal. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Intel Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are among 11 companies scheduled to post quarterly results this week. Analysts estimate profits for S&P 500 members fell 6.7 percent last quarter.

Earnings were key to keeping equities from caving after the selloff in August when stocks suffered the first correction since the European sovereign debt crisis in 2011. While the S&P 500 ended down 0.7 percent for 2015, a strategy of buying shares during the peaks of four earnings season would have returned about 11 percent, according to data compiled by New York-based FBN Securities Inc.

One of the reasons stocks have done well is the propensity of companies to beat analyst predictions when they report results. The S&P 500 climbed an average 2.3 percent over the month following Alcoa’s announcements in 2015. That’s about four times the normal rate of return for all reporting seasons in data going back to 1993.

“The U.S.’s economy is moving along at steady pace,” said Chad Morganlander, a Florham Park, New Jersey-based money manager at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., which oversees about $170 billion. “External factors are applying pressure on earnings and revenue growth, so investors will be closely watching the companies that report this week.”

The new year has brought volatility, anxiety about global growth and losses for equity investors. The S&P 500 capped its steepest ever slide over five days to begin a year amid a worldwide rout sparked by worries that China’s slowdown is worse than anticipated. The benchmark’s tumble to start 2016 has left it 9.7 percent below its all-time high set in May after coming within 1 percent of the record as recently as November. It is 3 percent above the August bottom, retracing a rebound of as much as 13 percent that peaked on Nov. 3.

Investors on Friday found little comfort in December job gains that exceeded forecasts from economists surveyed by Bloomberg, but failed to spark the wage growth sought by Federal Reserve policy makers as inflation continues to undershoot their target. Fed Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart said he favors continued tightening of monetary policy this year, and a global selloff in stock markets is unlikely to affect the U.S. economy.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index fell 10 percent Monday to 24.30 after a 48 percent jump last week to a three-month high. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX remains on track for its biggest monthly gain since August’s 135 percent jump. About 9 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 28 percent above the three-month average.

Seven of the S&P 500’s 10 main industries increased today, with consumer and phone companies rising the most. Energy, health-care and raw-materials shares were the worst performers, falling at least 1.1 percent.

Macy’s posted its strongest gain since November 2013 after activist hedge fund Starboard Value stepped up pressure to squeeze money out of the department-store chain’s real estate, which the firm values at $21 billion. Kohl’s Corp. climbed 4.6 percent following a Wall Street Journal report that the retailer is considering whether to hire an investment bank to advise it on alternatives that may include a sale to a private equity firm.

Cigarette makers Philip Morris International Inc., Reynolds American Inc. and Altria Group Inc. rallied more than 2 percent to boost consumer staples shares. Amazon.com Inc. and Home Depot Inc. gained at least 1.5 percent to drive an advance in discretionary companies.

Thirty-seven of the 40 energy companies in the benchmark sank as the group fell further into five-year lows. The price of crude oil decreased for a sixth straight day to a 12-year nadir. The resource has slipped 16 percent over the period. Consol Energy Inc. plunged 9.5 percent to the lowest in three weeks, while Exxon Mobil Corp. lost 2.2 percent.

Health-care stocks in the S&P 500 dropped to the lowest since Oct. 6 as drug developers fell. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index declined 3.4 percent and extending its eight-day skid to 15 percent.

Celgene Corp. lost 5.5 percent after issuing preliminary fourth-quarter and 2015 earnings that missed analysts’ estimates. The company also promoted Chief Operating Officer Mark Alles to chief executive officer, with outgoing CEO Bob Hugin remaining at the drugmaker as executive chairman. McKesson Corp. slid 10 percent, the most since March 2009, after narrowing its 2016 earnings guidance.

Raw-materials companies fell as the price of copper slid 2.4 percent, touching the lowest since 2009 on concerns the economic slowdown is worsening in China, the world’s biggest consumer. Freeport-McMoRan, the top publicly traded copper producer, tumbled as much as 22 percent and marked the biggest intraday loss ever. Newmont Mining Corp. slipped 5.6 percent, while DuPont Co. lost 3.3 percent.

Under Armour Inc. slumped 6.7 percent, the most in three months. Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock to the equivalent of sell from neutral, in part citing declining market share in women’s apparel and lower average selling prices in footwear.

Among companies moving on corporate news, HCA Holdings Inc. rallied 5.5 percent after the hospital operator issued a preliminary measure of 2015 earnings that exceeded estimates. Tenet Healthcare Corp. rose 1.7 percent.

Affymetrix Inc. surged 52 percent after Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. agreed to acquire the company in a deal valued at about $1.3 billion, adding technology used by scientists and biologists to analyze specimens at the cellular and genetic level. Baxalta Inc. declined 2.3 percent as Shire Plc won over the drug developer after adding cash to sweeten a takeover bid worth about $32 billion.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

My country and your country,

my God and your God – all that is the fragmentation of thought.

-Krishnamurti

As ever,

Carolann

Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.

–Albert Einstein, 1879-1955

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

Portfolio Manager &

Senior Vice-President

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square,

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

January 8, 2016

January 8, 2016 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

The Poem: Poetry and walking each invite a kind of meditation, In this poem, the contemplation of snowflakes – the precise seeing of the external landscape – gives way to the landscape of the speaker’s psyche. –Natasha Trethewey.

SNOWFLAKES

By Jennifer Grotz

Yesterday they were denticulate as dandelion greens, they
locked together in spokes and fell so weightlessly

I thought of best friends holding hands.
And then of mating hawks that soar into the air to link their claws

and somersault down, separating just before they touch the ground.
Sometimes the snowflakes glitter, it’s more like tinkling

than snow, it never strikes, and I want to be struck, that is
I want to know what to do. I begin enthusiastically.

I go in a hurry, I fall pell-mell down a hill, like a ball of yarn’s
unraveling trajectory – down and away but also surprising ricochets

that only after seem foretold. Yesterday I took a walk because
I wanted to be struck, and what happened was

an accident: a downy clump floated precisely in my eye.
The lashes clutched it close, melting it against the eye’s hot surface.

And like the woman talking to herself in an empty church
eventually realizes she is praying. I walked home with eyes that melted snow.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Vivienne Palmer takes Blue (l.) and Chiquita, both rescue dogs, for a walk in snowy Boulder, Colo., Friday morning. Paul Aiken/Daily Camera/AP

A rainbow glows behind a palm tree near Seal Beach Pier in Seal Beach, Calif., Thursday. Most of California saw sunny skies after days of powerful El Nino-driven storms drenched the region. Matt Masin/The Orange County Register/AP

The Flying Scotsman steam engine leaves East Lancashire Railway in Bury, Britain, Friday. The venerable engine, which has toured both the United States and Australia since it was retired from service, made a series of short test runs ahead of a program of heritage journeys this year on Britain’s main lines after a decade of restoration. It is one of the world’s most famous engines. Darren Staples/Reuters

Tourists walk on the beach in Nice, southeastern France, during high tide Friday. Temperatures in the area rose to 18 degrees Celsius (64 Fahrenheit.) Lionel Cironneau/AP

Market Closes for January 8^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16346.45	-167.65 -1.02%

S&P 500	1922.03	-21.06 -1.08%

NASDAQ	4643.633	-45.793 -0.98%

TSX	12445.45	-2.76
		-0.02%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17697.96	-69.38
		-0.39%
HANG SENG	20453.71	+120.37
		+0.59%
SENSEX	24934.33	+82.50
		+0.33%
FTSE 100	5912.44	-41.64
		-0.70%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.297	1.323
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.061	2.073
U.S. 10 Year Bond	2.1156	2.1491
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.9094	2.9305

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.70554	0.70833
US $	1.41735	1.41178

Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.54853	0.64578
US $	1.09255	0.91529

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1101.85	1106.35

Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	33.16	33.27

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

(Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks slid for an eighth day and posted the biggest weekly loss since August, as a decline in gold producers overshadowed labor market reports that exceeded expectations.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index fell 2.76 points to 12,445.45 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, after earlier advancing as much as 0.8 percent. The gauge lost 4.3 percent in the first week of trading in 2016 and capped yesterday a 20 percent plunge from its September 2014 record, hitting a magnitude in declines commonly defined as a bear market. Canada is the second Group of 7 country to see its benchmark enter a bear market, after Germany’s DAX Index did in August.

Employers in Canada added 22,800 jobs in December, almost three times the median projection by economists who saw an increase of 8,000 jobs, according to a Bloomberg survey. U.S. payrolls surged by 292,000, topping the highest forecast in a Bloomberg survey.

Underlying concerns remain about the makeup of the gains in employment, Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, wrote in a note to clients. Workers designated as employees by Statistics Canada fell by 17,500 while the self- employed category jumped 40,300. Full-time positions also fell, the data show.

“A nice headline masking a continuing trend for weak hiring by private sector companies,” Shenfeld said. “All of the job growth was in Ontario, consistent with our view that Canada’s largest province is in reasonable shape.”

The S&P/TSX Gold Index slipped 2.2 percent as the price of the metal, which rallied this week as investors sought a haven, fell 0.5 percent. Barrick Gold Corp. lost 3.4 percent.

Canada’s resource-rich benchmark has been one of the worst- performing markets in the world in the past year, as oil prices in New York and London collapsed to decade lows. Valuations for Canadian stocks have tumbled about 15 percent to 19.2 times earnings, from a high of 22.7 in April.

Even as crude extended losses to a 12-year low, Canadian energy producers added 1.1 percent, halting two days of declines.

Global equity markets closed lower Friday after a chaotic week of trading in which China halted trading twice before suspending a new circuit-breaker system and lowered the reference rate for the yuan. A gauge of developed and emerging nation stocks fell, as the U.S. benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 1.1 percent in New York and posted its worst week since 2011

By Lu Wang, Anna-Louise Jackson and Oliver Renick

(Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks tumbled in a late-afternoon selloff that sent major equity indexes to their worst weekly declines in more than four years, as investors found little relief in moves by China to restore calm to its sinking markets and data that showed resilience in the U.S labor market.

Bank stocks led the late slide, with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. falling at least 2.2 percent to cap the week with drops of nearly 11 percent. Energy shares in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 1.3 percent to press deeper into five-year lows. Seven of the benchmark’s 10 main industries sank more than 5.5 percent this week in the gauge’s worst five-day start to a year in data going back to 1928.

The S&P 500 dropped 1.1 percent to 1,922.03 at 4 p.m. in New York, and fell 6 percent for the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 167.65 points, or 1 percent, to 16,346.45. The index lost more than 1,000 points this week in its worst opening five-days to a year ever. The Nasdaq Composite Index declined 1 percent, stretching its losing streak to seven days, the longest since 2011.

“When investors saw there was no traction and the market was unable to hold rallies over several attempts throughout the day, it just became fear of going into the weekend,” said Gene Peroni, a fund manager at Advisors Asset Management Inc. in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. “The market has just been so reactive to news, people will wait on the sidelines and see what the weekend brings. It has been a rough week.”

A report today showed a 292,000 gain in jobs last month, exceeding the highest forecast in a Bloomberg survey, after a 252,000 increase in November that was stronger than previously estimated. The unemployment rate held at 5 percent, a seven-year low.

Worries over contagion from China briefly lessened Friday after officials in the Asian nation set a higher yuan reference rate, suspended a controversial circuit breaker system that had halted stock trading twice since it was implemented at the start of the week and directed state-controlled funds to buy local shares. U.S. equities fluctuated near three-month lows for most of the session before selling accelerated in the final hour.

The S&P 500 has fallen 7.3 percent since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates last month for the first time in nearly a decade. The central bank balked at boosting borrowing costs in September in part due to turbulence sparked by China’s August currency devaluation. The poor start to 2016 has left the benchmark index 9.8 percent below its all-time high set in May after coming within 1 percent of the record as recently as November. It’s 2.9 percent above the August bottom.

“We’re still in a risk-off mentality,” said Mark Spellman, a fund manager who helps oversee more than $4 billion at Alpine Funds in Purchase, New York. “I think any kind of risk-on trade mentality that comes in is going to be short-lived until global economic growth improves.”

Fed policy makers have emphasized that progress in economic data will guide their path for future rate increases, which they expect to be gradual. The employment report today showed the jobless rate held at 5 percent, while at the same time worker pay disappointed, rising less than forecast from a year earlier. The Fed is counting on tighter labor conditions to lead to a pickup in wages and inflation.

Today’s data “is reflective of an underlying momentum that’s in fact accelerating, not decelerating,” said Dan Veru, who helps oversee $3.7 billion as chief investment officer at Fort Lee, New Jersey-based Palisade Capital Management. “There is no wage inflation and there is no commodity inflation. When you have both of these factors, the Fed will be more motivated’’ to hold off raising rates, he said.

After this week’s turbulence triggered by China, investors will begin to contend with another expected decline in corporate earnings as the reporting season begins. Alcoa Inc., JPMorgan Chase and Intel Corp. are scheduled to deliver results next week. Analysts forecast profits for S&P 500 members fell 6.7 percent last quarter.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index rose 8.1 percent Friday to 27.01, after erasing an earlier 10 percent drop. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX is at a three-month high and up 48 percent this month, which would be the most since August’s 135 percent jump. All of the S&P 500’s 10 main industries fell, with financial, health-care and energy shares losing more than 1.3 percent.

Merck & Co. paced declines among health-care companies, losing 1.7 percent as the group fell for the sixth time in seven days and to their lowest level since Oct. 22. Mylan NV and Endo International Plc sank the most, down at least 4.2 percent. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index declined 1.9 percent amid its longest losing streak in three months.

Banks in the benchmark posted their worst week in more than four years, down 9.5 percent, while also in the midst of their longest stretch of declines since 2011. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. all fell at least 9.6 percent this week.

Gap Inc. plunged 14 percent today, its steepest since 2011, after December sales tumbled at its Old Navy chain. The retailer’s shares had rallied 5.7 percent yesterday before the report. Kohl’s Corp. and Nordstrom Inc. lost more than 4.6 percent.

Teen-apparel seller American Eagle Outfitters Inc. dropped the most in more than five years, down almost 17 percent. Holiday sales missed analysts’ estimates, stoking concerns about a company that had been outshining the rest of its industry.

Viacom Inc. jumped 5.4 percent, the most since August 2013, to lead a climb among media companies after the shares plunged 45 percent last year. A report said the company will allow investors in March to vote on whether to expand voting rights to all holders. CBS Corp. added 2.5 percent, its biggest gain in two months.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Be magnificent!

When one lives with concepts one never learns. The concepts become static.

You may change them but the very transformation of one concept to another is still static, is still fixed.

But to have the sensitivity to feel, seeing that life is not a movement of two separate activities,

the external and the inward, to see that it is one, to realize that the inter-relationship is this movement,

is this ebb and flow of sorrow and pleasure and joy and depression, loneliness and escape,

to perceive nonverbally this life as a whole, not fragmented, nor broken up, is to learn.

Krishnamurti

As ever,

Carolann

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

-Thomas Paine, 1737-1809

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

Portfolio Manager &

Senior Vice-President

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square,

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

January 8, 2016

January 7, 2016 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

100: Price (in Chinese yuan, about $1500 US) for a can filled with compressed air from Canada’s Rocky Mountains, enough for 150 breaths, according to Vitality Air. Intended as a novelty, the first shipment to China sold out in four days, and the company is struggling to meet demand.

4.75 Trillion: Value (n US dollars) of global merger activity in 2015, led by the $148.6 billion Pfizer-Allergan merger. This year exceeded the previous peak reached in 2007.

Today in History:

1927 – Commercial transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and London.

1942 – The World War II siege of Bataan began.

1953 – President Harry S. Truman announced in his State of the Union address that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb.

1959 – The United States recognized Fidel Castro’s new government in Cuba.

1989 – Japanese Emperor Hirohito died at age 87.

1996 – A major blizzard paralyzed the eastern United States, claiming more than 100 lives.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

People dressed in traditional Russian clothes dance during a celebration of Orthodox Christmas in St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday. Russian Orthodox believers celebrate Christmas by the Julian calendar on Jan. 7. Dmitry Lovetsky/AP

Mongolian-born grand sumo champion Yokozuna Harumafuji (l.) performs the New Year’s ring-entering rite at the annual celebration at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo Thursday. Yuya Shino/Reuters

Market Closes for January 7^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16514.10	-392.41 -2.32%

S&P 500	1943.09	-47.17 -2.37%

NASDAQ	4689.426	-146.339 -3.03%

TSX	12448.21	-278.59
		-2.19%

International Markets

Market

Index

Close

Change

NIKKEI

17767.34

-423.98

-2.33%

HANG

SENG

20333.34

-647.47

-3.09%

SENSEX

25851.83

-554.50

-2.18%

FTSE 100

5954.08

-119.30

-1.96%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.323	1.327
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.073	2.085
U.S. 10 Year Bond	2.1491	2.1702
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.9305	2.9375

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.70833	0.71040
US $	1.41178	1.40765

Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.54218	0.64843
US $	1.09229	0.91551

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1106.35	1091.40

Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	33.27	33.97

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

(Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks sank a seventh straight day, entering a bear market and ending a bull run that lasted two years.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index sank 2.2 percent to 12,448.21 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, falling 20 percent below its September 2014 record to meet the definition of a bear market. Canada is the second Group of 7 country to see its benchmark equity gauge enter a bear market, after Germany’s DAX Index in August.

“The cat’s out of the bag in terms of avoiding Canada,” said Ian Nakamoto, director of research at MacDougall MacDougall & MacTier Inc. in Toronto. His firm manages about C$5 billion. “It’s hard to be positive. There doesn’t seem to be any stabilization coming. When markets continue to fall, you can’t help but lose some confidence.”

Canada’s resource-rich benchmark has been one of the worst- performing markets in the world in the past year, caught at the center of a commodity price storm and growing fears economic growth from China to Europe is slowing at the same time as the prospect of rising U.S. interest rates boosted the dollar.

A glut in crude supplies collapsed prices to decade-lows, leaving Canada’s oil the cheapest in the world. Energy shares in the S&P/TSX slumped 26 percent last year, the worst-performing among 10 industries. Investors seeking a non-resource haven amassed around health-care stocks until leader Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. plunged amid government scrutiny of its pricing practices.

The S&P/TSX has posted its longest losing streak since November, with global stocks extending a three-month low and New York crude plunging to a 12-year nadir, pushing closer to $30 a barrel. Valuations for Canadian stocks have tumbled about 15 percent to 19.2 times earnings, from a high of 22.7 in April.

China’s CSI 300 Index plunged 6.9 percent, triggering the second full-day trading halt this week. The country’s securities regulator later suspended the new stock circuit-breaker system after an emergency meeting to discuss the nation’s tumbling stock market. That’s after the nation’s central bank lowered the reference rate for the yuan, pushing the currency to a five-year low and raising concern about the health of the world’s second- largest economy. China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the U.S.

“There’s a lot of nervousness out there,” said Som Seif, chief executive officer of Purpose Investments Inc. in Toronto. His firm manages about C$1.8 billion ($1.28 billion). “China devalued the yuan and the pace is scaring people.”

Broad losses among Canada’s banks, energy producers, industrial and consumer stocks paced declines with the S&P/TSX. Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank, the largest lenders in the nation, lost at least 1.8 percent as financial shares dropped to a four-month low.

The Canadian market will continue to struggle until oil prices rebound, as many of the largest and most important parts of the economy including banks are tied to the industry, said David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. in an interview in Toronto.

“Canada has a ‘For Sale’ sign on the front lawn,” Rosenberg said. “The key to any turnaround will be the price of oil, and not just for the energy sector.”

Crescent Point Energy Corp. slumped 12 percent, among the biggest decliners in the S&P/TSX Energy Index. The oil producer cut its planned capital spending in 2016 by as much as 39 percent compared with 2015 estimates. Fifty-three of 55 members in the group declined.

Base metals producers joined the retreat, with First Quantum Minerals Ltd. slumping 8.2 percent and Teck Resources Ltd. declining 8.7 percent as copper futures fell to less than $2 a pound for the first time in more than six years.

Smartphone maker BlackBerry Ltd. sank 8.9 percent, the biggest retreat in a year, after the company said it will unveil at least one more Android device this year.

Meanwhile, gold producers have been a relative island of calm in the Canadian market with the S&P/TSX Gold Index rallying 14 percent so far this year as the metal climbed above $1,100 an ounce. Barrick Gold Corp. jumped 10 percent to the highest level since July.

“Gold is finally looking more positive than negative,” Kerry Smith, an analyst at Haywood Securities Inc., said by phone from Toronto. “The stocks have been beaten up for so long. It’s kind of a safe haven trade.”

By Oliver Renick

(Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks tumbled to press three-month lows, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping more than 390 points to post its biggest two-day retreat since August, amid a China-led rout that continued to engulf markets around the globe.

Banks and technology companies paced the retreat, marking their biggest declines in four months, with Citigroup Inc. and Apple Inc. down more than 4.2 percent. Yahoo! Inc. slid 6.2 percent, the most since May. Boeing Co. and General Electric Co. dropped more than 4.1 percent, two of Dow’s three worst today. Energy shares in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index declined to a five-year low.

The S&P 500slid 2.4 percent to 1,943.09 at 4 p.m. in New York, falling to its lowest since Oct. 1 in the worst four-day start to a year in data going back to 1928. The Dow lost 392.41 points, or 2.3 percent, to 16,514.10 and has fallen more than 900 points this week. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 3 percent. About 10 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 42 percent above the three-month average.

“China devaluing its currency sparks concern that the global growth engine is starting to slow and that creates a dump of any high-flying stocks or anything people perceive as risk,” said Yousef Abbasi, a market strategist at JonesTrading Institutional Services in New York. “When you start to worry about growth, you have crude oil down and it all ties together. It’s the new year and people are scratching their heads, they’re not quite ready to buy the dip.”

Equity markets worldwide tumbled after Chinese stock exchanges closed less than a half hour after opening, as a more than 7 percent plunge triggered a market-wide halt for the second time this week. China’s securities regulator has since suspended a new stock circuit-breaker that caused the halts.

A flight from risky assets in the first week of the new year has wiped $2.5 trillion from global equities, made worse by China’s central bank cutting its yuan reference rate for an eighth straight day. China’s tolerance for a weaker yuan is being seen as evidence policy makers are struggling to revive an economy that’s the world’s biggest consumer of energy, metals and grains.

The move revived the angst that sent financial markets into turmoil last summer, driving U.S. stocks to three-month lows yesterday in a selloff led by commodity producers. Comments by billionaire George Soros exacerbated market jitters after he told an economic forum in Sri Lanka today that global markets are facing a crisis and investors need to be very cautious.

Commodity shares remained weak, with copper producer Freeport-McMoRan Inc. tumbling 9.1 percent and Alcoa Inc. down 4 percent. West Texas Intermediate crude futures briefly wiped out a drop of more than 5 percent before the rebound withered, and its settled 2.1 percent lower. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. lost 8.4 percent, and Chevron Corp. fell 3.5 percent after its biggest slide since August yesterday.

A weaker yuan would support China’s flagging export sector, but it also boosts risks for the nation’s foreign-currency borrowers, and heightens speculation that the slowdown in Asia’s biggest economy is deeper than official data suggest.

While investors cope with the turbulence sparked by China, another source of consternation is looming as the corporate earnings season for 2015’s final quarter soon begins. Alcoa Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Intel Corp. are scheduled to report results next week. Analysts forecast profits for companies in the S&P 500 fell 6.1 percent last quarter.

“The market has been in denial,” said Michael Ingram, a market strategist at BGC Partners in London. “The broader issue is that growth dynamics are weak pretty much everywhere. Make no mistake, what happens in China this year will shape the market dynamic for the next five.”

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index rose 21 percent to 24.99, its highest since Sept. 29. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX is up 37 percent so far this month, which would be the most since a record-setting 135 percent jump in August.

The S&P 500 has fallen 6.3 percent since Federal Reserve raised interest rates last month for the first time in nearly a decade. The central bank balked at boosting borrowing costs in September in part due to turbulence sparked by China’s August currency devaluation. The poor start to 2016 has left the benchmark index 8.8 percent below its all-time high set in May after coming within 1 percent of the record as recently as November.

Fed Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker reiterated in a speech Thursday that the pace of interest-rate increases is expected to be gradual, but dependent on the economic outlook. He also expressed confidence inflation will move back to the Fed’s 2 percent goal “over the near term.” Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said he’s less optimistic on inflation than his colleagues, making a case for an especially cautious approach to raising rates in 2016.

A report today showed fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, a sign the labor market remained robust entering 2016. The government’s December jobs report is due Friday, with economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecasting a 200,000 gain and an unemployment rate holding at 5 percent.

All 10 of the S&P 500’s main industries fell Thursday, with financial, industrial and technology shares down more than 2.8 percent. Utilities slid less than 0.8 percent to end as the day’s best performers.

The KBW Bank Index dropped for a sixth day, down 3.3 percent amid its longest streak of losses since 2012. Capital One Financial Corp. and State Street Corp. lost more than 4.5 percent, falling to their lowest in more than two years. JPMorgan Chase & Co. slid 4 percent, its worst decline in four months.

A day after being one of the market’s bright spots, airlines were among the worst performers, with a Bloomberg index of U.S. carriers tumbling to its lowest since Oct. 8. SkyWest Inc. reversed a 4.9 percent rally Wednesday, losing 8.4 percent. JetBlue Airways Corp. fell 4.9 percent to a six-month low. The Dow Jones Transportation Average sank 3.1 percent to the lowest in more than two years.

Homebuilders were battered for a second day, led by an 15 percent decline in KB Home, the biggest in nearly a year. The company reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that missed analysts’ estimates, as bad weather and labor shortages delayed some deliveries. Toll Brothers Inc. sank 5.5 percent.

Among shares bucking today’s negative trend, Macy’s Inc. added 2.1 percent after announcing plans to cut costs and explore options for its real estate following a worse holiday period than the the largest U.S. department-store company expected.

Beaten-down Wal-Mart Stores Inc. continued to rally, up 2.3 percent to add to its longest winning streak in two months. The retailing giant fell 29 percent last year, its worst annual decline since 1974. Gap Inc. rose for the third time in four days, up 5.7 percent. The apparel seller plunged 41 percent in 2015, the most in 14 years.

Signet Jewelers Ltd. advanced 4.7 percent, its best gain in four months, after raising the bottom end of its fourth-quarter profit and sales forecasts. The retailer’s shares have rallied 16 percent during the past three weeks.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

You are the product of your environment.

That is why you are not able to see beyond the habits and social conventions

that are rooted deep within you. If you wish to see beyond them,

you must first of all free yourself from the normal way in which you interpret facts.

Swami Prajnanpad

As ever,

Carolann

It always seems impossible until it’s done.

-Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013

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

Portfolio Manager &

Senior Vice-President

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square,

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

January 8, 2016

January 6, 2016 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Carnivale season begins today…

It is also Three Kings Day or Twelfth Day, also known as the Epiphany (from the Greek, epiphaneia, meaning “appearance” or “manifestation.” It is in commemoration of the manifestation of Christ to the Wise Men from the East. It also marks the official ending of Christmas, as the twelfth day after December 25^th. Tradition calls the three Magi, Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar; the first offered gold as the emblem of royalty, the second, Frankincense, in token of divinity and the third, myrrh, in prophetic allusion to the persecution unto death that awaited. Melchior means “my king of light” from the Hebrew, malki-or, Gaspar, which is the same name as Jasper, has been derived from the Old Persian Kansbar, “treasurer” and Balthazar is a corrupt form of the Aramaic name Belshazzar, itself from Babylonian Belu-sharu-usur, “Bel protect the king.”

Among the ancient Medes and Persians the Magi were members of a priestly caste credited with great occult powers, and in Camoens’ Lusiad (1572) the term denotes Indian Brahmans. Ammianus Marcellinus says the Persian magi derived their knowledge from the Brahmans of India, and Arianus expressly calls the Brahmans “magi.”

All over Orthodox Europe today, celebrations of the epiphany occur:

People parade through the streets as part of celebrations on Three Kings Day in downtown Vilnius, Lithuania, Wednesday. Epiphany, the 12th night of Christmas, marks the day the three wise men visited Christ. Mindaugas Kulbis/AP

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Simon Ammann of Switzerland soars through the air during the first competition round of the final jumping at the 64th four-hills ski jumping tournament in Bischofshofen, Austria, Wednesday. Dominic Ebenbichler/Reuters

Members of the Edo Firemanship Preservation Association display their balancing skills atop bamboo ladders during a New Year demonstration by the fire brigade in Tokyo Wednesday. Yuya Shino/Reuters

Market Closes for January 6^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16906.51	-252.15 -1.47%

S&P 500	1990.26	-26.45 -1.31%

NASDAQ	4835.766	-55.664 -1.14%

TSX	12726.80	-193.34
		-1.50%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	18191.32	-182.68
		-0.99%
HANG SENG	20980.81	-207.91
		-0.98%
SENSEX	25406.33	-174.01
		-0.68%
FTSE 100	6073.38	-63.86
		-1.04%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.327	1.377
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.085	2.132
U.S. 10 Year Bond	2.1702	2.2357
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.9375	2.9951

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.71040	0.71540
US $	1.40765	1.39783

Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.51725	0.65909
US $	1.07786	0.92777

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1091.40	1077.00

Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	33.97	35.97

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

(Bloomberg) — The materials trade that battered Canadian stocks through much of last year is proving to be the equity market’s saving grace at the start of 2016.

A 7.2 percent rally among gold producers in the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index so far this year has softened the impact from waves of negative news that have roiled major markets elsewhere. The benchmark Canada stock gauge is still down for the sixth straight day as energy shares led losses.

Investors seeking a haven from turmoil in the market are turning once again to gold as the metal posted its longest winning streak since October, buoyed by the selloff in equities and North Korea’s nuclear test. Barrick Gold Corp. jumped 4.6 percent. Gold producers in the S&P/TSX have declined for five straight years.

“People now are getting legitimately concerned and wondering where can you go?” said Bruce Campbell, a fund manager at StoneCastle Investment Management in Kelowna, British Columbia. His firm manages about C$100 million.

Campbell is keeping his cash positions out of the market for now while waiting for more economic stability. “You start to wonder what the consensus trade is and you have to start looking the other way and what’s going to change,” he said. “‘Treasuries are low and the stock markets are down so let’s hold gold.”’

The Canadian benchmark, one of the worst-performing markets in the developed world in 2015, has lost only 2.2 percent in three days of trading, outperforming stock gauges in Germany and the U.S. The index has posted the sixth-smallest loss this year out of 24 developed equity markets tracked by Bloomberg. Valuations of Canadian stocks have fallen 13 percent from an April high, to 19.7 times earnings.

The S&P/TSX dropped 193.34 points, or 1.5 percent, to 12,726.80 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, about 30 index points away from a two-year low. Global stocks retreated to a three-month low as Brent crude plunged to an 11-year nadir. The Bloomberg Commodity Index slid a third straight day.

China’s central bank lowered the reference rate for the yuan, pushing the currency to a five-year low and raising concern about the economic health of the world’s second-largest economy. China rocked financial markets when it last devalued the currency in August, sparking a rout in emerging-market currencies and stocks. Canada’s dollar touched a 12-year low as bets mount the Bank of Canada will drop interest rates to a record low this year. China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the U.S.

Encana Corp. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. fell at least 4.3 percent as all 55 members of the S&P/TSX Energy Index retreated. The industry, the worst-performing in the broader S&P/TSX last year, fell 3.2 percent today, for the most in three weeks. Crude in New York dropped to less than $34 a barrel after supplies at the U.S. hub rose to a record.

Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank fell at least 1.6 percent as financial services stocks sank 1.7 percent as a group, for a three-month low.

Magna International Inc., the largest North American auto- parts supplier, fell a seventh straight day to match the longest losing streak since April, and Linamar Corp. tumbled 5.2 percent to a November low. U.S. automakers Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. fell in New York yesterday after missing December sales estimates, and extended declines Wednesday.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. rose 2.1 percent for a second day of gains. The drugmaker named former Chief Financial Officer Howard Schiller to run the company while Chief Executive Officer Michael Pearson remains hospitalized with severe pneumonia. Pearson is on medical leave and the timing of his return remains uncertain, the company said in a statement.

By Oliver Renick and Dani Burger

(Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks tumbled to three-month lows, following equities around the world after China weakened its currency, stoking investor concern that a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy will damp global growth.

Energy and raw-material companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index led the selloff, losing at least 2.6 percent as China’s move revived the angst that sent financial markets into turmoil last summer. Chevron Corp. declined 4 percent, while copper producer Freeport-McMoRan Inc. slid 8.1 percent. Seven of the benchmark’s 10 main industries dropped at least 1 percent.

The S&P 500 lost 1.3 percent to 1,990.26 at 4 p.m. in New York, trimming a drop of as much as 1.9 percent while sliding to its lowest level since Oct. 6. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 252.15 points, or 1.5 percent, to 16,906.51, bringing its three-day loss to 3 percent, its worst start to a year since 2008. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 1.1 percent. About 8.2 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 17 percent higher than the three-month average.

“This is risk aversion right now,” said Benjamin Dunn, president of Alpha Theory Advisors, which works with hedge funds overseeing about $6 billion. “Not a lot of people had conviction coming into the year after a violently flat to down year, and now we’re perhaps getting confirmation that China is as bad as people think. We’ve lost the tailwinds from the Fed and investor enthusiasm, and this adds to the mosaic of fear that’s out there right now.”

China’s central bank set the yuan’s reference rate at an unexpectedly weak level, adding to anxiety about an economic slowdown that has dominated markets this week. The S&P 500 on Monday kicked off 2016 with its worst start in 15 years. Adding to geopolitical worries, North Korea claims it successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb, which follows a recent buildup of tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Commodity producers fell amid speculation that weakness in China would weigh on demand for raw materials. Brent crude oil dropped below $35 a barrel to its lowest since 2004, while West Texas Intermediate futures lost more than 5 percent. Apache Corp. and Murphy Oil Corp. tumbled 11 percent to the steepest losses in seven years.

China’s currency devaluation last August triggered a global rout that drove the S&P 500 to its first correction in four years, after it had reached an all-time high as recently as May. Now, UBS Group AG’s technical strategists predict the U.S. benchmark will enter a bear market as early as this year.

The S&P 500 has fallen 2.6 percent in the first three days of the year. That’s better than the 2.7 percent plunge to start 2015, which marked the worst opening since 2008. The index swung wildly last January before ending the month lower by 3.1 percent. The poor start to 2016 has left the benchmark index 6.6 percent below its all-time high set in May.

Sentiment has turned more cautious on stocks after the Federal Reserve’s first interest-rate increase since 2006 and forecasts for little to no growth in corporate earnings until the spring. Fed officials have stressed that while the pace of future hikes will be gradual, it will depend on progress in economic data.

A report Wednesday showed companies added more workers than projected in December, indicating the job market had momentum as 2015 came to a close. Separate data showed service companies continued to outperform their manufacturing counterparts last month as orders and employment picked up. Another report said factory orders in November fell, in line with forecasts from economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Equities offered little reaction to the Fed’s latest meeting minutes, which showed some policy makers saw the decision to raise interest rates as a “close call.” Minutes from the December gathering said “almost all” of the rate-setting committee’s participants were satisfied the criteria for tighter policy had been met.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index rose 6.5 percent to 20.59, after earlier surging as much as 13 percent. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX jumped nearly 14 percent Monday to a three-week high, before slipping 6.6 percent yesterday.

“I don’t know we’ll see a panic unless we see it extend for several more days,” said David Spika, global investment strategist for GuideStone Capital Management. “We started the year with a low level of conviction. We’ve conditioned our clients for much higher levels of volatility — to expect the market to go straight up is not very smart.”

While investors cope with turbulence sparked by China, another source of consternation is looming as the corporate earnings season for 2015’s final quarter soon begins. Alcoa Inc. is scheduled to report results on Monday, with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Intel Corp. also due next week. Analysts forecast profits for companies in the S&P 500 fell 6.1 percent last quarter.

Energy companies in the benchmark index, which are forecast to post a 68 percent drop in fourth-quarter earnings, were the hardest hit group Wednesday, falling 3.6 percent to the lowest level since August.

Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. continued their losing streaks, down at least 3.5 percent after sales reports yesterday disappointed. GM fell for an eighth day, the longest stretch in five months. AutoNation Inc. tumbled 11 percent, the most since 2009, after saying it expects to report significant margin declines for the fourth quarter amid a tougher sales environment.

“Sentiment right now is tarnished partially over earnings but also because the pace of global growth is slow and geopolitical tensions are rising,” said Terry Sandven, who helps oversee $126 billion as chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis. “In the absence of earnings visibility and given global headwinds, we’re in store for a market going sideways to down.”

Among the few bright spots Wednesday, Netflix Inc. jumped 9.3 percent, the most since July and the online video company’s first gain in five days. It began selling its streaming service in India and more than 100 other countries, a major step toward its goal of becoming the first global online television service.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Be magnificent!

How can we be free to look and learn when our minds from the moment we are born

to the moment we die are shaped by a particular culture in the narrow pattern of “me?”

For centuries we have been conditioned by nationality, caste, class, tradition,

religion, language, education, literature, art, custom, convention,

propaganda of all kinds, economic pressure, the food we eat, the climate we live in,

our family, our friends, our experience – every influence you can think of –

and therefore our responses to every problem are conditioned.

Are you aware that you are conditioned?

Krishnamurti

As ever,

Carolann

Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.

-Alfred A. Montapert

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

Portfolio Manager &

Senior Vice-President

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square,

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

January 8, 2016January 8, 2016

January 5, 2016 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Just returned last night from spending the holidays in New Zealand. What a beautiful country – breath-taking scenery, fabulous people and great sailing too. We went fly-fishing one day – our first time – and we both loved it. By the end of the first day, I began to understand the aesthetic quality of this beguiling activity.

Talk soon and the very best to you and yours in this New Year that lies ahead.

Warmest regards, Carolann.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

A campaigner against the building of a third Heathrow Airport runway helps plant black paper planes in Victoria Gardens next to Parliament in London, Tuesday. 2,000 planes were planted, the estimated number of planes that would use the new runway daily. Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

People visit ice sculptures illuminated by color lights on the opening day of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival in the northern city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China, Tuesday. Aly Song/Reuters

Market Closes for January 5^th, 2016

MarketIndex	Close	Change
DowJones	17158.66	+9.72 +0.06%

S&P 500	2016.71	+4.05 +0.20%

NASDAQ	4891.430	-11.659 -0.24%

TSX	12920.14	-7.01
		-0.05%

International Markets

MarketIndex	Close	Change
NIKKEI	18374.00	-76.98
		-0.42%
HANGSENG	21188.72	-138.40
		-0.65%
SENSEX	25580.34	-43.01
		-0.17%
FTSE 100	6137.24	+43.81
		+0.72%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.10 Year Bond	1.377	1.399
CND.30 Year Bond	2.132	2.137
U.S. 10 Year Bond	2.2357	2.2428
U.S.30 Year Bond	2.9951	2.9872

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.71540	0.71712
US$	1.39783	1.39447

Euro Rate1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.50351	0.66511
US$	1.07560	0.92971

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London GoldFix	1077.00	1082.25

Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	35.97	36.76

Market Commentary:

Canadian

By Eric Lam

(Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell a fifth day, the longest streak of losses since November, as declines among retail and raw material companies offset a rebound in energy producers.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index dropped 7.01 points to 12,920.14 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, paring earlier losses of as much as 0.7 percent. The gauge had its worst opening day yesterday since 2005.

Magna International Inc., the largest North American auto- parts supplier, fell a sixth straight day after U.S. automakers Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. tumbled in New York after missing December sales estimates.

Fertilizer maker Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. dropped 2.4 percent to lead raw-materials producers lower. Industrial shares also fell. Canadian National Railway Co. fell 1.3 percent and struggling airplane manufacturer Bombardier Inc. dropped 2.2 percent.

Energy stocks reversed losses in the final hour of trading. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. added 2.1 percent and Encana Corp. increased 3.7 percent. Oil fell to a two-week low, holding losses below $37 a barrel in New York ahead of U.S. government supply data Wednesday forecast to be little-changed, according to a Bloomberg survey.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. rose 2.8 percent. Shares had lost 3.2 percent in the last two trading sessions after a regulatory filing on Thursday showed Bill Ackman, the activist investor who has been a staunch defender of Valeant, trimmed his fund’s holdings of the stock for tax reasons. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management sold about 5 million shares of Valeant in order to create a tax loss for investors in two accounts.

By Oliver Renick and Dani Burger

(Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks closed little changed after China’s move to stabilize its financial markets left investors to focus on the prospects for global growth amid renewed selling in crude oil and weaker-than-expected auto sales.

Gunmakers Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. and Sturm Ruger Co. surged at least 6.7 percent as President Barack Obama unveiled tougher restrictions on arms sales. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a firearms seller, climbed 2.4 percent. General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. slumped after their December sales disappointed. Apple Inc., the world’s most valuable company, closed at its lowest since 2014 on a report it may cut production of an iPhone model. Walt Disney Co. slid 2 percent, down for a fifth day.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 0.2 percent to 2,016.71 at 4 p.m. in New York, after wavering between gains and losses following the gauge’s 1.5 percent drop on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 9.72 points to 17,158.66. The Nasdaq Composite Index declined 0.2 percent. About 7 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, in line with the three- month average.

“Overall, yesterday wasn’t too bad and may have even been an overreaction,” said Mark Kepner, an equity trader at Themis Trading LLC in Chatham, New Jersey. “We’ve been through this before with China — they’re in the process of changing their economy, you’re going to have ups and downs with that and it’s going to keep happening.”

Stocks in China rose Tuesday in volatile trading, stabilizing after weaker factory data from the world’s second- largest economy sparked a worldwide selloff on Monday. State- backed funds were said to intervene after yesterday’s 7 percent plunge in the CSI 300 Index of large-capitalization companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen wiped out $590 billion of market value. European equities also climbed after a 2.5 percent rout on Monday.

Even as yesterday ranked as the sixth-worst start to a year for the S&P 500 since 1932, the move is less surprising when compared with how the gauge usually fares. The index has moved an average 1.1 percent in either direction on opening day, compared with an average daily move of 0.77 percent on all other days.

Following Monday’s selloff, investors stuck with what worked last year. Health-care and consumer staples shares, two of 2015’s best performers, were among the leaders. Technology shares slipped the most under Apple’s drag. Seven of the S&P 500’s 10 main industries rose, with phone companies posting the strongest advance.

Sentiment has turned more cautious on stocks amid the Federal Reserve’s first interest-rate increase since 2006, and forecasts for little to no growth in corporate earnings before the spring. Strategists at Citigroup Inc. cut their view on U.S. equities to underweight Tuesday, saying that while they’re not especially bearish, they see better opportunities in Europe and Japan. “After outperforming for six consecutive years, maybe U.S. equities are due a breather,” the firm wrote in a note.

The main U.S. equity benchmark slipped 0.7 percent in 2015 to cap its first annual drop since 2011, after reaching a record in May and suffering its first correction in four years in August amid concerns that China’s slowdown would crimp global growth.

Fed officials expect the pace of future rate increases to be gradual, though they have stressed that the path depends on progress in economic data. A report Monday showed the fastest contraction in U.S. manufacturing in six years, adding to worries that weakness in China’s economy is spreading. Investors will look for further clues this week in data on services industry growth, factory activity, employment and minutes from the Fed’s December meeting.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index fell 6.5 percent to 19.34. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX jumped nearly 14 percent Monday, the most since Dec. 11 when the S&P 500 dropped 1.9 percent.

“What people are looking at are the big three — global growth, especially Chinese growth, the impact of energy and a Fed that’s now in play,” said Stephen Wood, who helps manage $237 billion as chief market strategist for North America at Russell Investments in New York. “Oil is going to continue to be a volatile factor, not only in the broader market but also earnings.”

Energy companies in the S&P 500 rose, erasing an earlier decline even as West Texas Intermediate crude sank more than 2 percent. Transocean Ltd. and Ensco Plc slipped more than 3.1 percent, which was overshadowed by Valero Energy Corp. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. climbing at least 1.6 percent. Oil dropped to a two-week low on speculation that a government report will show U.S. crude inventories climbed last week.

Among shares moving on corporate news, Apple sank to its lowest level in more than 14 months and weighed on the technology group after Japan’s Nikkei Asian Review reported the company would reduce the output of its latest iPhones by about 30 percent in the first quarter of 2016. Apple supplier Skyworks Solutions Inc. lost 6 percent to its lowest in nearly a year.

General Motors fell 2.6 percent to a three-month low after December sales disappointed. The fallout hit parts maker Delphi Automotive Plc and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which dropped more than 2.7 percent. Dealer AutoNation Inc. lost 3.3 percent to its lowest since Sept. 29.

Gunmaker shares rallied on speculation that sales of firearms will rise after President Barack Obama unveiled on Tuesday a package of executive actions to expand background checks.

Smith & Wesson gained 11 percent to a record and Sturm Ruger added 6.8 percent to a five-month high. Gun sales have surged in recent years any time the threat of new restrictions has made news, normally in the aftermath of mass shootings.

Wal-Mart led the Dow for a second day, rising 2.4 percent to its highest since Oct. 13 as gun sellers also advanced. The retail giant is recovering from a 29 percent plunge last year, the most since 1974. Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. and Cabela’s Inc. rose at least 1.3 percent.

Joining Wal-Mart to boost the consumer staples group, cigarette makers Reynolds American Inc. and Altria Group Inc. gained more than 2 percent. Grocery chain Kroger Co. added 2.3 percent.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

Have you ever tried living with yourself?

If so, you will begin to see that yourself is not a static state,

it is a fresh living thing.

And to live with a living thing your mind must also be alive.

And it cannot be alive if it is caught in opinions, judgements, and values.

Krishnamurti

As ever,

Carolann

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

-Arthur Ashe, 1943-1993

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

Portfolio Manager &

Senior Vice-President

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square,

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

January 4, 2016

January 4, 2016 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Actors perform during a fire and smoke festival as they celebrate Orthodox Christmas in St. Petersburg, Russia, Monday. Russians continue to celebrate the New Year and Orthodox Christmas from Jan. 1 to 10. Dmitry Lovetsky/AP

People look around ice sculptures ahead of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival in the northern city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China, Monday. Aly Song/Reuters

Market Closes for January 4^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	17148.94	-276.09 -1.58%

S&P 500	2012.66	-31.28 -1.53%

NASDAQ	4903.089	-104.323 -2.08%

TSX	12927.15	-82.80
		-0.64%

International Markets

Market

Index

Close

Change

NIKKEI

18450.98

-582.73

-3.06%

HANG

SENG

21327.12

-587.28

-2.68%

SENSEX

25623.35

-537.55

-2.05%

FTSE 100

6093.43

-148.89

-2.39%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.399	1.401
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.137	2.157
U.S. 10 Year Bond	2.2428	2.2943
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.9872	3.0335

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.71712	0.72039
US $	1.39447	1.38814

Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.51053	0.66202
US $	1.08323	0.92317

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1082.25	1060.00

Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	36.76	36.60

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

(Bloomberg) — At least for one day, Canada’s stock market benefited from its resource-heavy tilt as a rally in gold producers helped minimize damage during the worst global equity selloff to start a year in at least three decades.

While broad losses among banks and railway operators paced a 0.6 percent drop in the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index, the benchmark had one of the best performances among developed- nation gauges tracked by Bloomberg. A global stock index tumbled 2 percent for its worst inaugural session since at least 1988, as weak manufacturing figures from the U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest economies, sparked concern that growth will slow.

Canadian shares still delivered their worst opening day since 2005, with the S&P/TSX falling 82.80 points to 12,927.15 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The gauge pared earlier losses of 2 percent as energy shares clawed back most of a 2 percent rout and gold miners rallied 4.2 percent as the metal’s price rose on haven demand. Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank, the largest lenders, sank at least 1 percent.

The equities selling started in China, where investors scrambled for the exits after the CSI 300 Index plunged 7 percent, triggering a halt for the day after an earlier 15- minute suspension at 5 percent failed to stop the retreat. European shares lost 2.5 percent and the S&P 500 in the U.S. fell 1.5 percent.

“If you want to be bearish, there’s a lot to be concerned about,” said Greg Taylor, a fund manager at Aurion Capital Management in Toronto. His firm manages about C$7.2 billion. “It’s certainly not a good headline and it doesn’t help sentiment at all. But it does feel some of the worst news is priced in.”

The Canadian benchmark index sank 11 percent in 2015, the biggest annual slide since 2008 as a combination of slowing growth in China and Europe, a glut in crude production and the prospect of increasing U.S. lending rates buffeted Canadian stocks.

The Caixin factory index, a measure of manufacturing, came in at 48.2 in December, short of the median analyst estimate of 48.9 in a Bloomberg survey. The nation’s first official economic report of 2016 on Jan. 1 signaled manufacturing weakened for a fifth month, the longest such streak since 2009. Figures also showed U.S. manufacturing contracting at the fastest pace in six years.

Canadian stocks may finally be able to outperform their U.S. peer S&P 500 for the first time since 2010 this year if the price of resources from crude to gold rebounds, Taylor said. Geo-political risks such as the rising tension between oil producers Iran and Saudi Arabia, which had taken a backseat to supply and demand concerns in 2015, may return to the forefront, he said.

“The one thing Canadian investors had been hoping for last year was for a peak in the U.S. dollar,” Taylor said. “The Canadian market is starting to show some strength. Sell the winning trades and a reversion into lagging trades in gold and oil. If this trend were to hold then maybe Canada will start to outperform the U.S.”

By Oliver Renick

(Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks tumbled to begin 2016, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index off to its worst start in 15 years as a rout in Chinese equities renewed concern that an economic slowdown there will damp global growth.

Investors returning to the market after the New Year holiday faced a worldwide selloff sparked by weak factory data in China, while a reading that showed the fastest contraction in U.S. manufacturing in six years bolstered anxiety that slowing growth in the world’s second-largest economy is spreading. A flareup in tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran added to the unease.

The S&P 500 Index fell 1.5 percent to 2,012.66 at 4 p.m. in New York, after sliding as much as 2.7 percent as equities pared losses in the final 30 minutes of trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 276.09 points, or 1.6 percent, to 17,148.94. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 2.1 percent. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index jumped 14 percent, the most in three weeks. About 8.5 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 21 percent above the three-month average.

“We’ve had a number of negatives out there in the U.S., and China is a reminder that there aren’t many things to be bullish about going into this year,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading Institutional Services LLC in Greenwich, Connecticut. “The three catalysts to the bull market were economic recovery, earnings recovery and accommodative policy, and while the economy has gotten better, we’ve lost the other two.”

Trading was halted in China after a 7 percent drop in the CSI 300 Index of large-capitalization companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen amid deteriorating manufacturing data. Chinese policy makers, who went to unprecedented lengths to prop up stock prices during a summer rout, are trying to prevent financial-market volatility from weighing on economy set to grow at its weakest annual pace since 1990.

The S&P 500’s decline was its sixth-worst start to a year in data compiled by Bloomberg going back to 1927. The biggest rout to open a year was in 1932 when the index sank 6.9 percent, followed by a 2.8 percent slide during the dot-com demise in 2001. In those two instances, the index averaged a full-year loss of 14 percent, though the five worst starts had an average annual gain of 5.1 percent.

S&P Dow Jones Indices data indicate the first day of trading has no predictive power for the rest of the year. The index ends the year in the same direction it takes on the opening day 50.6 percent of the time, the data show. The first month of the year has proved more telling — the gauge’s return in January determines its direction for the year 72.4 percent of the time.

After scaling new peaks and enduring its worst selloff in four years, the main U.S. equity index ended 2015 0.7 percent lower. Investor sentiment wavered last year between optimism that the economy was strong enough to handle higher borrowing costs and concern that China’s slowdown will hurt global growth, which exacerbated weakness in commodity prices and raw-material stocks.

The beginning of 2015 was also rocky, with the benchmark index dropping 2.7 percent in its first three sessions, followed by a two-day, 3 percent rally before eventually finishing January down 3.1 percent.

Meanwhile, investment strategies premised on buying shares based on their momentum just posted the best year since 2007, which isn’t great news for bulls. Past instances when momentum stocks — defined as the ones showing the biggest gains in the last six to 12 months — won have occurred closer to the end of rallies than the beginning, signaling indiscriminate buying at a time when more traditional share drivers such as earnings growth are starting to wane.

Escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are also adding to worries Monday, according to Robert W. Baird & Co.’s Patrick Spencer. “Middle Eastern concern and the escalation compounded by further issues in China are all adding to short- term weakness,” said Spencer, equities vice chairman at Baird in London. “The outlook still looks reasonable and I would take any weakness to selectively buy, especially in the consumer and housing market recovery area.”

Focus will turn toward a swath of economic reports this week, including data on factory activity, the monthly jobs report and minutes from the Federal Reserve’s meeting that ended with the first rate increase since 2006. A reading today showed manufacturing in the U.S. contracted in December at the fastest pace since 2009 as factories, hobbled by sluggish global growth, cut staff at the end of 2015.

All of the S&P 500’s main groups dropped on Monday, with financial, health-care and consumer discretionary shares down at least 1.7 percent. Microsoft Corp., Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. fell more than 1.2 percent. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index sank 3.2 percent, the most in a month to weigh on health-care.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. paced the drop in the financial group, down at least 2.6 percent as 83 of 87 members fell. McGraw Hill Financial Inc. and Huntington Bancshares Inc. fell the most, losing more than 3.2 percent. An index tracking bank stocks slumped 2.6 percent to the lowest since Oct. 21, and traded with volume 58 percent above their 30- day average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Several of 2015’s biggest winners and losers reversed roles in the first session of the new year. Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. dropped more than 3.8 percent, among the benchmark’s worst performers today after posting the strongest gains in 2015, up more than 117 percent. Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Consol Energy Inc. were the strongest gainers Monday, rising at least 8.4 percent, after leading declines last year.

Energy companies in the S&P 500 fell 0.2 percent Monday, the smallest decline among the main industries after posting the biggest drop last year, down nearly 24 percent. Southwestern Energy Inc. and Range Resources Corp. added more than 4.6 percent. Overshadowing those gains, Chevron Corp. and Phillips 66 lost at least 1.2 percent.

Among companies moving on corporate news, Baxalta Inc. jumped 5.5 percent to an all-time high. Bloomberg News reported that Shire Plc is in advanced talks to acquire the drugmaker for a deal of about $32 billion in cash and stock, excluding debt.

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. dropped 6.5 percent to a more than two-year low after analysts predicted a tough 2016 for the restaurant chain. Chipotle’s reputation was battered in recent months by an outbreak of E. coli that afflicted at least 53 people in nine states. That was followed by a norovirus contagion at a Boston location that sickened more than 140 college students.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” William Shakespeare

As ever,

Karen

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” Mahatma Gandhi

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

Portfolio Manager &

Senior Vice-President

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square,

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7