November 21, 2012 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Top of Form

November, by Robert Frost

November
We saw leaves go to glory, Then almost migratory
Go part way down the lane,
And then to end the story
Get beaten down and pasted
In one wild day of rain.

We heard ” ‘Tis Over” roaring.
A year of leaves was wasted.
Oh, we made a boast of storing,
Of saving and keeping,
But only by ignoring
The waste of moments sleeping,
The waste of pleasure weeping,
By denying and ignoring
The waste of nations warring.

Bottom of Form

On this day in 1995, the Dow finished above 5000 for the first time ever.  –Steven Russolillo, WSJ, 11/21/2012

And also on this day in…

1620 – Leaders of the Mayflower expedition frame the “Mayflower Compact,” designed to bolster unity among the settlers.

1694 – Voltaire was born.

1783 – Man’s first flight in a balloon.

1934 – A New York court rules Gloria Vanderbilt unfit for custody of her daughter.

1934 – Cole Porter’s musical Anything Goes premieres at New York’s Alvin Theatre.

1937 – Marlo Thomas was born.

1945 – Goldie Hawn was born.

1970 – U.S. planes conduct widespread bombing raids in North Vietnam.

1986 – The Justice Department begins an inquiry into the National Security Council into what will become known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

 
People do not change when you tell them they should: they change when they tell themselves they must. –Michael Mandelbaum, John Hopkins foreign policy specialist, NY Times, 6/24/09.

photos of the day

November 21, 2012

Martial arts group TAL performs a non-verbal martial arts demonstration in the Korean traditional art of Taekwondo during the opening ceremony of the K-art hall Taekwondo Theatre in Seoul, South Korea.

Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters

A child looks at a dinosaur sculpture designed by Chinese artist Sui Jianguo at the 798 Art District in Beijing. The 798 Art District, often compared to New York City’s Greenwich Village, is a thriving community of about 400 galleries, shops and restaurants on the eastern edge of Beijing housed in a complex of former electronics factories built with the help of East Germany in the 1950s.

Lee Jin-man/AP

Market Closes for November 21st, 2012:

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rose for a fourth day after gold miners and financial stocks climbed as a cease- fire between Israel and Hamas was announced, offsetting a failure by Europe policymakers to reach a deal on Greek debt.

Centerra Gold Inc. and Osisko Mining Corp. rose at least 3.9 percent as the price of the metal gained for the second time in three days. Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Montreal added at least 0.6 percent. Tahoe Resources Inc. slipped 1.7 percent after silver trading on the largest spot market in China plunged 30 percent this year.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index rose 53.78 points, or 0.4 percent, to 12,100.06 in Toronto, erasing earlier losses of as much as 0.2 percent. The benchmark Canadian equity gauge is up 1.2 percent this year.

Gold mining companies and banks contributed most to gains in the S&P/TSX as nine of 10 industries advanced. Trading volume was down 11 percent compared with the 30-day average.

“We’re waiting for the next major set of data points,” said Jennifer Radman, a fund manager with Caldwell Investment Management Ltd. in Toronto. The firm manages just under C$1 billion ($1 billion). “With Europe, it’s been such a long process to get to where it’s at, and it will take a long time to get through. The market does get bored with specific news at times.”

The Canadian market also typically slows down ahead of America’s Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow, when U.S. equity markets close for the day, Radman said.

Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas agreed to call a halt to more than a week of air strikes and missile attacks, after talks brokered by Egypt’s Islamist government and the U.S. European leaders head into their second confrontation this week conceding they’re likely to fail to agree on a seven-year budget plan just as they failed to strike a deal on Greek debt.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told lawmakers in the national parliament today that budget negotiations slated for a summit meeting tomorrow may slide into next year as France rejected cuts to farm subsidies and the U.K. insisted spending must be reduced.

Centerra Gold gained 5.8 percent to C$9.70 and Osisko climbed 3.9 percent to C$8.48. Gold for December delivery rose 0.3 percent to settle at $1,728.20 in New York, erasing earlier losses of as much as 0.3 percent.

Detour Gold Corp., which is developing a project in northeastern Ontario, fell 3.7 percent to C$26.50 after announcing it will sell C$106 million in stock to raise capital.

The company will sell 4 million shares at C$26.50, with the proceeds to be used for working capital at its Detour Lake mine.

Tahoe Resources dropped 1.7 percent to C$17.42. Trading volume on the Shanghai White Platinum & Silver Exchange slid 30 percent from a year earlier to 1,000 metric tons, said Gao Huijie, chief executive officer. The slowdown in trading is primarily due to less industrial use as China, the world’s second-largest economy, has seen growth slow for seven straight quarters through the end of September to 7.4 percent.

Banro Corp., which operates the Twangiza gold mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, fell 5.9 percent to C$2.89.

Yesterday, Congolese rebels took the city of Goma in the eastern part of the country. Banro said in a statement today its operations have not been affected by the fighting.

TD Bank rose 0.6 percent to C$80.66 and BMO gained 0.7 percent to C$58.92. Canada’s major banks are set to report their fourth-quarter earnings next week, beginning with Royal Bank of Canada on Nov. 29.

US

By Rita Nazareth and Tom Stoukas

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index higher a fourth day, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr announced a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

Hewlett-Packard Co. rallied 2 percent after tumbling 12 percent yesterday. Salesforce.com Inc., the largest maker of online customer-management software, rose 8.8 percent after forecasting sales and profit that were in line with analysts’ projections. Deere & Co., the largest agricultural equipment maker, fell 3.7 percent as earnings missed analysts’ estimates.

The S&P 500 gained 0.2 percent to 1,391.03 at 4 p.m. New York time. It rose 2.8 percent in four days for the longest winning streak since Oct. 4. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 48.38 points, or 0.4 percent, to 12,836.89 today. Volume for exchange-listed stocks in the U.S. was 4.8 billion shares, or 22 percent below the three-month daily average. The U.S. market will close for the Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow.

“The announcement of the cease-fire is by no means a fix to the issue, but it does suggest that the negotiations are going on,” said Alan Gayle, senior strategist at RidgeWorth Capital Management in Richmond, Virginia, which oversees about $47 billion. He spoke in a phone interview. “In the U.S., the economic releases were mixed, but generally positive.”

Equities rose as Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas agreed to call a halt to more than a week of air strikes and missile attacks, after talks brokered by Egypt’s Islamist government and the U.S.

Fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits last week as damage to the labor market caused by superstorm Sandy began to subside. The index of U.S. leading economic indicators rose at a slower pace in October. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan final index of U.S. consumer sentiment for November rose to 82.7 from 82.6 at the end of last month. Economists projected 84.5 for the gauge.

Europe’s finance ministers will regroup on Nov. 26 after talks broke up without an agreement on a debt-reduction package for Greece, with creditors led by Germany refusing to put up fresh money.

“We’ve got some interesting pockets of strength in the economy that could prove to be brighter spots next year than a lot of people think, notwithstanding the fiscal cliff, which is the elephant in the room,” said Liz Ann Sonders, the New York- based chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab Corp., which has $1.9 trillion in client assets. “There’s a lot of choppiness. Europe is back in the crosshairs.”

Stocks advanced over the previous three days amid better- than-forecast housing data and as President Barack Obama expressed confidence on a budget agreement with Congress. Obama met with senior Democrats and Republicans on Nov. 16 for talks to avoid $607 billion of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that, if allowed to come into force, might push the country into a recession next year.

Salesforce rose 8.8 percent to $158.78. Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff is signing bigger enterprise agreements that give customers broad access to Salesforce’s software, following the company’s Dreamforce conference in September.

That’s helping to stave off competition from Oracle Corp., SAP AG and Microsoft Corp., which are buying companies that offer business-management tools over the Internet and gaining traction in an area Salesforce pioneered.

Vivus Inc. climbed 13 percent to $11.73. The maker of the Qsymia weight-loss medicine that won U.S. approval in July jumped after insurer Aetna Inc. cleared the way for coverage of the obesity treatment.

HP rallied 2 percent to $11.94. The stock plunged yesterday as the company’s $8.8 billion writedown tied to the purchase of software maker Autonomy Corp. fueled concern that Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman and her board aren’t up to the task of engineering a turnaround.

Deere fell 3.7 percent to $82.83. The company said farm- equipment sales in Europe will be unchanged or 5 percent lower in fiscal 2013 and Asia will be little changed due to “softer” economic conditions in India and China. That may undermine the company’s effort to expand the share of sales made outside the U.S. and Canada to 50 percent by 2018.

Zale Corp. tumbled 30 percent to $5.21. The operator of the Zales and Piercing Pagoda jewelry chains reported a loss that was wider than analysts estimated.

St. Jude Medical Inc. slid 12 percent to $31.37. The maker of heart rhythm devices sank after U.S. government inspectors criticized the company’s methods for testing its Durata cables used for defibrillators. Lawrence Biegelsen, an analyst at Wells Fargo & Co. in New York, downgraded St. Jude to market perform from outperform.

The S&P 500 will climb back to the level it was trading at before the Nov. 6 U.S. presidential election if it crosses a key resistance, according to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.

The U.S. equity benchmark on Nov. 16 rebounded from 1,346, a two-thirds Fibonacci retracement level of the rally from June to September, said Dmytro Bondar, a technical markets strategist at RBS in London. While this signals a bullish reversal, the gauge must also breach the one-third retracement, or 1,395, for further gains, he said.

“A new trend was set after a major reversal,” Bondar said. “It clearly indicates that the index is set for recovery, confirmed by candlestick patterns. In the short term, it’s bullish.”

The S&P 500 may rise to as high as 1,427 in the next two weeks, he said. The measure last closed above that level on Nov. 6. The index gained less than 0.1 percent to 1,387.81 yesterday.

The S&P 500 may trade in a range or fall after reaching 1,427, Bondar said. If it clears that level, however, it may advance to its September high of 1,474.

In technical analysis, investors and analysts study charts of trading patterns and prices to predict changes in a security, commodity, currency or index.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

Why is there this division between man and man, between race and race, culture against culture,

one series of ideologies set one against another?  Why?

Why is there this separation?

Krishnamurti, 1895-1986

As ever,

Carolann

The highest result of education is tolerance.

-Helen Keller, 1880-1968

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

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7