March 6, 2013 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Dine Around Victoria is happening right now until March 10^th, 2013.  What is Dine around Victoria you ask? It is various restaurants in Victoria who offer select three-course menus for $20, $30 or $40 per person.  It is a great way to try out new restaurants that our beautiful city has to offer, without spending a lot on a meal you may not like.  Some of the restaurants included in this year’s Dine Around Victoria are: Chez Michael, Harbour House, Lure, Bon Rouge Bistro and many other fabulous restaurants.  For more information on Dine Around Victoria, take a look at Tourism Victoria’s website.

One restaurant that I absolutely recommend you try (not part of the Dine Around Victoria special) is Brasserie L’Ecole, located on Government Street in Victoria.  With the menu changing nightly, the chef/owner’s approach is to use seasonal, locally available products cooked in a Classic French-country style.  Great food, paired with a great wine gives this unique, intimate restaurant the ultimate atmosphere for a date/anniversary evening!  To look at the changing menu, please visit their website at:  www.lecole.ca

Enjoy!

Today in History

1808 – At Harvard University, the first college orchestra was founded.

1834 – The city of York in Upper Canada was incorporated as Toronto.

1886 – “The Nightingale” was first published. It was the first magazine for nurses.

1899 – Aspirin was patented by German researchers Felix Hoffman and Hermann Dreser.

1939 – In Spain, Jose Miaja took over the Madrid government after a military coup and vowed to seek “peace with honor.”

1941 – Les Hite and his orchestra recorded “The World is Waiting for the Sunrise”.

1947 – Winston Churchill announced that he opposed British troop withdrawals from India.

1960 – Switzerland granted women the right to vote in municipal elections.

1985 – Yul Brynner played his his 4,500th performance in the musical “The King and I.”

“Where there is love there is life.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Photos of the Day – March 6^th, 2013

This image provided by NASA shows an image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory of a blast of plasma streaming from the sun in August 2012. Scientists say a solar eruption was detected on March 5, 2013 and was headed toward Mars. NASA’s Curiosity rover will postpone some activities but other Mars missions will operate normally. NASA/AP

A swan swims in the river Spree where willows are reflected during sunny weather in Berlin, Germany. Jens Kalaene/dpa/AP

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

Market Closes for March 6^th, 2013

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

March 6 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rose to a 19-month high as the central bank said its interest-rate policy is likely to be unchanged for some time amid slowing growth in the world’s 11th-largest economy.

Trilogy Energy Corp. surged 13 percent after it boosted cash flow and oil reserves in the fourth quarter and an analyst raised the energy company’s stock rating. BlackBerry climbed 7.4 percent after its chief executive officer said the latest line of smartphones was luring customers from rivals. Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. rose to a record as the company said it was ahead of schedule with a job-reduction plan.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index increased 95.92 points, or 0.8 percent, to 12,831.96 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, the highest close since July 2011. The S&P/TSX has gained 3.2 percent this year.

“The rising market today is a combination of the follow- through from the strong markets of the past few days and the fact that interest rates appear to be unchanged for a period of time,” said Anish Chopra, managing director and fund manager with TD Asset Management Ltd., from Toronto. His firm oversees about C$204 billion ($198 billion).

The Bank of Canada kept the benchmark rate on overnight loans between commercial banks at 1 percent. It said inflation will “remain low in the near term” in an economy with “material excess capacity.”

Statistics Canada said March 1 that output expanded at a 0.6 percent annualized pace in the fourth quarter, slower than Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney’s 1 percent forecast from January. The 0.5 percent inflation rate seen in that month remains well below his 2 percent target.

“The Canadian economy isn’t growing as fast as the U.S.,” Chopra said. “So you’re seeing the implications of that in how the Bank of Canada is positioning its rates, that it could stay at 1 percent for quite a while.”

Global stocks rose to the highest in more than 4 1/2 years today, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average extended its record as a private report showed faster-than-forecast U.S. jobs growth and the Federal Reserve said the economy is growing.

Raw-materials stocks contributed most to gains in the S&P/TSX, rising 3.4 percent as a group. Eight of 10 index groups advanced. Trading volume was in line with the 30-day average.

Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest gold producer, rose 4.4 percent to C$30.61. Goldcorp Inc. climbed 4.7 percent to C$34.44. Gold for April delivery settled unchanged at $1,574.90 an ounce in New York. The metal rose 0.6 percent to $1,583.60 in electronic trading at 4:36 p.m., after the U.S. central bank said the economy grew at a modest to moderate rate across most of the country.

Trilogy Energy jumped C$3.50 to C$29.65 for its biggest percentage gain since February 2011. Funds flow from operations jumped 71 percent in the fourth quarter and reserves grew by the equivalent of 19.2 million barrels of oil, the company said yesterday.

Gordon Currie, senior analyst with Salman Partners, raised the stock to buy from hold and said the oil and gas producer could afford to increase its dividend. “Trilogy has a relatively low dividend compared to peer group companies,” he said in a client note. Trilogy’s dividend yield is about 1.4 percent, compared with 3.2 percent for the S&P/TSX Energy Index.

BlackBerry, formerly known as Research In Motion Ltd., increased 95 Canadian cents to C$13.85 after CEO Thorsten Heins, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper Expansion, said he was “a little surprised” that the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone was attracting customers from other platforms.

“Operators are supporting us a lot because they want BlackBerry 10 to be an alternative to Samsung and Apple,” Heins said in an interview with the newspaper during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week.

Canadian Pacific rose 38 Canadian cents to C$129.80 after Chief Executive Officer Hunter Harrison, speaking today at a transportation conference in New York, said the company has already cut more than 3,000 jobs and is ahead of its schedule to eliminate more than one-fifth of its workforce by 2016.

Torstar Corp. tumbled 12 percent to C$7, its largest daily drop in four years, after the publisher of the Toronto Star newspaper reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of 49 Canadian cents a share. The result fell short of the average estimate of 53 cents, according to a Bloomberg survey of eight analysts.

US

By Charles Stein

March 6 (Bloomberg) — Investors pulled money from mutual funds that buy U.S. stocks for the first week this year, just before the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record.

Domestic stock funds experienced redemptions of $1.13 billion in the week ended Feb. 27, according to the Washington- based Investment Company Institute. The funds had won deposits in the previous seven weeks, ICI data show.

Last week’s redemptions underscore investors remain wary of U.S. equities as lawmakers in Washington debate how to trim the federal budget deficit. Domestic stock funds suffered withdrawals in each of the past six years, as fund managers failed to protect clients from losses during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. Investors poured $18.56 billion into domestic stocks funds in January, the biggest monthly deposits in nine years, as stocks rallied and the U.S. economy showed signs of strengthening.

“I think we are going to have to wait a few more months before we know what is happening,” Geoff Bobroff, a mutual fund consultant based in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, said in a telephone interview.

Investors started pulling money from U.S. stock funds in 2007, and accelerated withdrawals after a 38 percent decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in 2008. They instead sought out the perceived safety of bond funds, even as the stock market more than doubled from a 12-year low in March 2009.

The Dow rose 0.3 percent to 14,295.09 at 1:53 p.m. in New York, after reaching a record yesterday to surpass its previous peak in October 2007.

A private jobs report today from ADP Research Institute bolstered optimism that the U.S. job market will keep expanding this year. Employers added 198,000 positions last month, ADP said, topping the median economist forecast for 170,000.

In January, investors added money to both stock and bond funds, a pattern that continued in February, according to ICI data. Funds that buy international stocks have been more popular than their domestic counterparts, with such funds winning $2.18 billion in deposits last week, the ICI said.

“I still think people perceive the international arena as a better growth option,” Greggory Warren, an analyst with Chicago-based Morningstar Inc., said in a telephone interview.

Warren said he remains skeptical that investors are ready to return to stocks in a big way. In a Feb. 4 note, he pointed out that in past years, retail investors pulled back from stocks whenever markets declined. “We are not convinced this is the start of a trend,” he wrote.

Investors still favor bond funds, ignoring warnings that bonds lose value if interest rates rise. Bond funds drew $4.99 billion in the week ended Feb. 27, with taxable fixed-income funds gathering $4.41 billion and those investing in municipal debt getting $579 million.

“I am concerned that the general public doesn’t quite understand the pricing of bonds and interest rates and the inverse correlation between the two,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President Gary D. Cohn said in a Feb. 11 interview on Bloomberg Television.

Dan Fuss, whose Loomis Sayles Bond Fund beat 97 percent of peers in the last three years, said in a January interview that the fixed-income market is more “overbought” that at any time in his 55-year career.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t go out and borrow money to buy bonds right now,” he said.

Concern that investors will shift their allocations to equities from bonds in a so-called great rotation is overblown, DoubleLine Capital Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Gundlach said yesterday in a webcast organized by his firm.

Happy Wednesday Everyone!!!!

Be magnificent!

“We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face… we must do that which we think we cannot.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

As ever,

Amanda Bourke

Assistant to Carolann Steinhoff

Queensbury Securities Inc.

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8X 3Y7

Tel: 778-430-5808

Fax: 778-430-5838