July 25, 2022 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents: Happy Monday.
July 25, 1978: The first baby conceived by in-vitro fertilization was born in Oldham, England.  Go to article »

Ice age children frolicked in ‘giant sloth puddles’ 11,000 years ago, footprints reveal:  More than 11,000 years ago, young children trekking with their families through what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico discovered the stuff of childhood dreams: muddy puddles made from the footprints of a giant ground sloth.  Few things are more enticing to a youngster than a muddy puddle. The children — likely four in all — raced and splashed through the soppy sloth trackway, leaving their own footprints stamped in the playa — a dried up lake bed. Those footprints were preserved over millennia, leaving evidence of this prehistoric caper, new research finds.
Full Story: Live Science (7/25) 

Why does the Rosetta Stone have 3 kinds of writing?  The famous Rosetta Stone is a black granite slab inscribed with three ancient texts — two Egyptian and one Greek. It ultimately helped researchers decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, whose meaning had eluded historians for centuries.  But why did ancient scribes include three different kinds of writing, or scripts, on this iconic stone in the first place? Full Story: Live Science (7/24) 

Sharks are older than the dinosaurs. What’s the secret to their success?   Sharks are hardly newbies on our planet. As a group, they have existed for at least 450 million years, surviving four of the “big five” mass extinctions, including the catastrophe that wiped out the nonavian dinosaurs 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period.  For context, that makes sharks older than dinosaurs, which emerged roughly 240 million years ago, and even trees, which evolved on Earth around 390 million years ago.   So how have sharks, as a group, survived this long? What are the secrets to their success?  Full Story: Live Science (7/25) 

Taiwan unveils world’s first ‘certified quiet hiking trail’.  Shhhhh. If you want to explore this pristine hiking route, you’ll have to stay quiet to preserve the trail’s natural silence

Stunning video shows diver’s close call with massive great white shark.  For those who dream of going shark diving… chews wisely. Watch the terrifying moment when a shark breaches a diver’s enclosure.

Tour de France winner announced.  This 25-year-old Danish cyclist won his first Tour de France title in Paris.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Meltwater flows from the Greenland ice sheet into Baffin Bay, as captured by a Nasa Gulfstream V plane while on an airborne mission to measure melting Arctic sea ice
CREDIT: Kerem Yucel/AFP/Getty Images

A man dresses in feathers to honour Saint Francisco Solano. According to the tradition, while Solano lay on his death bed in a Peruvian convent, birds perched on his windowsill and sang to him, inspiring his followers to dress in bird costumes
CREDIT: Jorge Sáenz/AP

A motorist drives a car loaded high with vegetables and fruit
CREDIT: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images

Market Closes for July 25^th, 2022

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

Market Commentary:
On this day in 1987, the corporate assets of ZZZZ Best Co. were sold at bankruptcy auction in Los Angeles for $62,000. Less than four months earlier, the carpet-cleaning company run by 21-year-old whiz kid Barry Minkow had a stock-market value of roughly $300 million. 
Canada
By Bloomberg Automation
(Bloomberg) — The S&P/TSX Composite rose 0.6% at 19,104.48 in Toronto.
The index advanced to the highest closing level since June 28 after the previous session’s decrease of 0.4%.
Nutrien Ltd. contributed the most to the index gain, increasing 4.1%.
Secure Energy Services Inc. had the largest increase, rising 8.1%.
Today, 148 of 238 shares rose, while 85 fell; 7 of 11 sectors were higher, led by energy stocks.
Insights
* This month, the index rose 1.3%
* The index declined 5.4% in the past 52 weeks. The MSCI AC Americas Index lost 12% in the same period
* The S&P/TSX Composite is 14% below its 52-week high on April 5, 2022 and 5.1% above its low on July 14, 2022
* The S&P/TSX Composite is up 2.7% in the past 5 days and was little changed in the past 30 days
* S&P/TSX Composite is trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 14.9 on a trailing basis and 11.7 times estimated earnings of its members for the coming year
* The index’s dividend yield is 3.1% on a trailing 12-month basis
* S&P/TSX Composite’s members have a total market capitalization of C$3.04t
* 30-day price volatility fell to 18.80% compared with 20.12% in the previous session and the average of 19.70% over the past month
================================================================
| Index Points | |
Sector Name | Move | % Change | Adv/Dec
================================================================
* Energy | 98.6070| 2.9| 38/0
* Financials | 24.7212| 0.4| 24/5
* Industrials | 10.7135| 0.5| 15/11
* Consumer Staples | 8.4237| 1.1| 7/4
* Utilities | 4.1376| 0.4| 12/3
* Real Estate | 3.4242| 0.6| 18/5
* Health Care | 0.6074| 0.8| 5/1
* Communication Services | -1.2580| -0.1| 3/4
* Consumer Discretionary | -2.1028| -0.3| 6/7
* Materials | -11.1957| -0.5| 16/35
* Information Technology | -14.5443| -1.3| 4/10
================================================================
| | |Volume VS |
| Index | | 20D AVG |YTD Change
Top Contributors |Points Move| % Change | (%) | (%)
================================================================
* Nutrien | 15.7700| 4.1| 1.9| 10.8
* Enbridge | 15.0800| 2.0| 78.8| 14.3
* Canadian Natural Resources | 14.2400| 2.8| -26.5| 23.7
* Barrick Gold | -8.0940| -3.3| -1.4| -20.4
* Agnico Eagle Mines | -8.4170| -5.2| 78.0| -26.6
* Shopify | -8.8930| -2.3| 5.1| -73.0
US
By Rita Nazareth
(Bloomberg) — Stocks wavered in a choppy session as traders braced for earnings from technology bellwethers amid the threats of a hawkish Federal Reserve, scorching inflation and a looming economic recession.
Traders turned more cautious after last week’s rally, with the S&P 500 closing slightly higher amid the lowest intraday volatility and volume of the year.
The Nasdaq 100 underperformed ahead of results from the likes of Apple Inc. and Google’s  parent Alphabet Inc.
In late trading, Walmart Inc. tumbled after cutting its profit outlook.
Ten-year US yields halted a two-day plunge.
This week will be a “make-or-break” period for investors’ confidence in the power of Corporate America, said DataTrek Research’s Nicholas Colas.
The economy is already feeling the pinch from repeated rate increases — with the Fed expected to deliver another jumbo hike Wednesday — and traders will get more clues on how much of that slowdown is reflected in earnings.
For now, investors are expecting mostly bad news from mega caps.
Amazon.com Inc.’s revenue is seen growing at its slowest rate in decades.
Chipmakers are lurching from boom times to a potential glut.
Gig-economy companies such as Uber Technologies Inc. and DoorDash Inc. could be victims of consumer budget cutting.
And the pullback in online advertising is set to weigh on results from Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc.
“For the recent rally to continue, markets need to feel that monetary policy and corporate earnings power are incrementally more predictable than six weeks ago,” Colas wrote in a note to clients. “Our bias is to lighten up here, but even long-term investors should understand that this week is critical to market psychology.”
Strategists at major Wall Street firms remained split on their views about earnings.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s David Kostin sees revenues under pressure of a stronger dollar, while Bank of America Corp. strategists note that corporate sentiment during earnings calls is deep in recession territory.
Meantime, Citigroup Inc. and UBS Global Wealth Management strategists say the earnings season is turning out to be better than feared as consumer spending remains resilient.

Investors are skeptical that the Fed can tame the worst inflation in four decades without driving the economy into a recession.
Over 60% of 1,343 respondents in the latest MLIV Pulse survey said there’s a low or zero probability that the US central bank can rein in consumer-price pressures without causing an economic contraction.
A hallmark of recession is a drop in investment, often driven by a slowdown in inventory building or outright destocking. Inventories and durable goods orders – due Wednesday — will help clarify whether a recession is at hand,
according to Anna Wong, chief U.S. economist for Bloomberg Economics.
She estimates that both have weighed on second-quarter gross domestic product.
The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge — PCE deflator — comes out Friday.
“Naturally, during times of market stress, every week seems pivotal,” wrote Strategas’ Jason De Sena Trennert and Ryan Grabinski.
The strategists added that they are still cautious as “earnings estimates have not yet begun to discount what would seem to be some obvious pressures on profit margins.”
Meantime, Ed Yardeni has some words of comfort — the worst has passed for this bear market.
“It’s never easy to pick a bottom in the stock market, but I’m going to give it a try,” the president of Yardeni Research said on Bloomberg Television. “The real question is going to be the earnings season, and so far the earnings season is going reasonably well. It has not really thrashed the stock market, and the stock market’s held up quite well.”
In corporate news, Apple announced a rare retail promotion in China, offering four days of discounts on its top-tier iPhones and related accessories in advance of the launch of its next-generation devices.
Intel Corp. has secured one of the biggest customers to date for its year-old contract chipmaking arm.
Regulators are directing US operators of Boeing Co. 777 widebody jets to repair aircraft to address concerns about potential fuel-tank explosions, according to a filing Monday.
Here are some key events to watch this week:
* Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta earnings due this week
* Bank of Japan releases minutes from its June meeting, Tuesday
* US new home sales, Conf. Board consumer confidence, Tuesday
* IMF’s world economic outlook update, Tuesday
* EU energy ministers emergency meeting, Tuesday
* Fed policy decision, briefing, Wednesday
* Australia CPI, Wednesday
* US GDP, Thursday
* Euro-area CPI, Friday
* US PCE deflator, personal income, University of Michigan consumer sentiment, Friday

Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
* The S&P 500 rose 0.1% as of 4 p.m. New York time
* The Nasdaq 100 fell 0.5%
* The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3%
* The MSCI World index was little changed
Currencies
* The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.2%
* The euro rose 0.1% to $1.0227
* The British pound rose 0.5% to $1.2053
* The Japanese yen fell 0.4% to 136.62 per dollar
Bonds
* The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced six basis points to 2.81%
* Germany’s 10-year yield declined one basis point to 1.02%
* Britain’s 10-year yield was little changed at 1.94%
Commodities
* West Texas Intermediate crude rose 2.2% to $96.75 a barrel
* Gold futures fell 0.5% to $1,736 an ounce
–With assistance from Andreea Papuc, Abigail Moses, Isabelle Lee, Vildana Hajric, Natalia Kniazhevich and Lu Wang.
Have a lovely evening.

Be magnificent!
As ever,

Carolann

Fatigue makes cowards of us all. –Vince Lombardi, 1913-1970.

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, CIWM
Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,
St. Andrew’s Square,
Suite 340A, 730 View St.,
Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

Tel: 778.430.5808
(C): 250.881.0801
Toll Free: 1.877.430.5895
Fax: 778.430.5828
www.carolannsteinhoff.com