January 24, 2017 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

On Jan. 24, 1965, Winston Churchill died in London at age 90.  You can see his tomb in the trees from his ancestral home (which is open to the public), Blenheim Palace.  It is a very stirring sight. 
I read all six volumes that Churchill wrote on the Second World War many years ago.  When I was reading about the events in Southeast Asia, I remember reading his description of what a blow it was and what a profound disappointment it was when Singapore fell.  I mentioned this for discussion to a client of mine at the time, who eventually became a close personal friend.  He was sailing with Gary and me in the Gulf Islands that weekend, having recently sold his own boat because he was getting on in years but still a terrific sailor.  He had fought in WW II (he had been one of the founding members of a colonial college that eventually became the University of Kuala Lampur) and he was captured when Singapore fell and sent to as a prisoner of war to a camp in Siam (to build the Bridge on the River Kwai).  He said it was all “rubbish”  –  Singapore fell because there were not enough fighting men to defend it and, in spite of repeated requests, no back-up troops were sent to assist.  I guess that’s what Churchill implied when he stated, “For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history.” 

-from  The New York Times on January 24^th, 1965:
[edited version]
By Anthony Lewis

London, Jan. 24 — Winston Churchill’s struggle for life ended this morning, and the people he had cherished and inspired and led through darkness mourned him as they have no other in this age.
Sir Winston died just after 8 o’clock, in the 10th day of public anxiety over his condition after a stroke. He was in his 91st year.

Britons small and great village curate, Prime Minister and Queen paid him tribute through the day and this evening. Statesmen around the world joined in homage to the statesman they acknowledge as the greatest of the age.
Londoners, during the last struggle, had come to accept Sir Winston’s death as inevitable. There was little of the shock and horror seen in the reaction to President Kennedy’s death.
Nevertheless, even those who consider themselves unsentimental found that they had difficult moments as they were reminded of the great Churchillian days.
The radio followed the announcement of the death with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. The opening theme symbolizing the knock of victory- three short notes and a long note evoked memories of Churchill’s wartime gesture, two fingers held aloft, in a “V for Victory.”

Parliament will meet tomorrow to authorize a state funeral, the first held for a commoner in this century. For the rest of the week public affairs will be slowed almost to a stop.
The body will lie in state Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Westminster Hall, the lofty medieval chamber adjoining Sir Winston’s real home, the House of Commons.
On Saturday a state funeral service will be held at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Burial will be in the country churchyard at Bladon village, near Blenheim Palace, the ancestral castle where Sir Winston was born. Queen Elizabeth will attend the state funeral…
…At the bedside were Lady Churchill and three living children- Randolph, Sarah and Mary.
At St. Paul’s this morning the state bell, “Great Tom,” tolled. It is usually rung only for the death of royalty, certain clergymen or the Lord Mayor of London.
Tonight the lights in Piccadilly Circus were out. The advertisers whose garish signs are for many a symbol of London decided to pay their respects with darkness tonight and again Saturday after the funeral.
Another change in London tradition was made in tribute to Sir Winston tonight. The Times of London broke its deeply established custom of carrying classified advertisements, not news, on the first page.
In Monday’s edition, the first page is given over to pictures of Sir Winston and the start of an obituary. The classified ads were moved to Page 3 for the first time since World War I. The paper also printed a 16-page supplement on Churchill’s career…
The radio today carried the Churchill voice — recordings of speeches that aroused a people to deeds of valor in a grim time.
“We shall never surrender.” It was such Churchillian words as these and the conviction with which he spoke them that many believe saved Britain and her allies from defeat and subjection to Hitler.
The weekly journal The Spectator said:
“We are a free people because a man called Winston Churchill lived.”
It is as the great wartime Prime Minister that he will above all be recorded. But those who mourned him today were moved by more than that.”
He was a great personality, not just a great statesman. He was human, with emotions and desires and faults, some on an Olympian scale.
He drank wine for breakfast when it pleased him to do so and champagne and brandy and whisky in quantities through the rest of the day. He smoked cigars continuously. He never exercised. And his health was amazing.
He lived on controversy. The adjectives often applied to him were pugnacious and combative. He was famous for ridicule and invective debate, for witticisms such as the one he applied to the Puritan figure, of Sir Stafford Cripps: “There, but for the grace of God, goes God.”
“His obstinacy was exhausting,” Harold Macmillan, a former Prime Minster, said on a television program tonight. But he went on to say that the other side of the coin was “undefeatable determination.”
Mr. Macmillan touched on another aspect of Sir Winston’s character- “his puckish sense of humor, his tremendous sense of fun, his quick alternation between grave and gay.”
In 1906, Churchill invented a term to get around a ban in the House of Commons on the word “lie.” He spoke of another member’s “terminological inexactitude.”
He was this age’s nearest equivalent to a Renaissance man.
He was a soldier, escaped war prisoner, historian, novelist, orator, journalist and politician.
He spent 60 years in the House of Commons but found time to write more than two dozen books.
In the midst of war and grand strategy, as he himself recorded in his history of World War II, he took time to note the pleasures of the flesh in Marrakesh in Morocco, and the plumbing in Yalta. He had a passion for detail.
It was his zeal for life that Londoners are remembering above all.
“His power seemed to be turned on all the time,” a wartime colleague, Gen. Sir Ian Jacob, has written.
Even his diction, was a triumph of will. He overcame a severe stammer and a lisp; the traces of those disabilities made his voice more compelling.
This weekend The Economist disclosed an episode revealing Sir Winston’s attitude toward the prospect of defeat and death.
At the end of the war, before the election that he lost in 1945, The Times of London prepared an editorial suggesting that he campaign as a nonpartisan world leader and retire gracefully rather soon afterward. The editor first informed Churchill that he was going to make these two points.
“Mr. Editor,” Churchill said to the first point, “I fight for my corner.” And, to the second: “Mr. Editor, I leave when the pub closes.”
PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Nermin Halilagic poses with kitchen utensils in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on Monday. Halilagic discovered earlier this year that he had the unusual ability to attach items to his body using what he says is energy radiated from his body. Without making any special preparation, he says he is able to hold on to spoons, forks, knives, and other kitchen appliances, as well as non-metal objects like remote controls, all plastic stuff, and cellphones. Dado Ruvic/Reuters

A Japanese Phoenix rooster poses at an ornamental chicken farm in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Tuesday. The colorful feathered fowls have become favorite pets as Vietnam is welcoming the Lunar New Year of the Rooster. Hau Dinh/AP

A walker is silhouetted in front of the setting sun on Primrose Hill in London on Tuesday. Toby Melville/Reuters
Market Closes for January 24^th, 2017

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

Market Commentary:
Canada
By Oliver Renick
     (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks advanced for the third time in four days and reached their highest since Sept. 2014 as oil prices climbed and U.S. President Donald Trump took action to revive the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
     The S&P/TSX Composite Index added 0.8 percent to 15,610.69 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, after declining Monday. Energy shares buoyed the benchmark index as crude oil rallied for the fifth time in six sessions to $52.91 per barrel.
     At the same time, Trump has put Canada and Mexico on notice that he’s determined to wring more favorable terms for the U.S. from the North American Free Trade Agreement. Trump’s plan to re-negotiate Nafta was received in Mexico with a call to protect tariff-free trading, while in Canada, officials seemed more concerned about avoiding unintentional damage to the economy as the U.S. targets Mexico.
* Materials shares up 1.3% and energy stocks climb 2.3% to lead market higher
* Health care only declining sector on the day, down 1.1%; consumer staples add 0.3% after losing as much as 0.7% in early trading
* Bonterra Energy jumps 5% to C$25.80 as Raymond James raises outlook to outperform with a price target of C$31 * First Quantum Minerals up 3.2% after rallying past its June 2015 offering price last week
* Fortuna Silver Mines down 11.1% for biggest decline in the benchmark index; company announced it will issue 10.3 m shares at $6.30 yesterday.
US
By Oliver Renick
     (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks climbed Tuesday as a rally in Freeport-McMoran Inc. led raw material stocks higher and oil prices advanced for a fourth day.
     The S&P 500 added 0.7 percent to 2,280.07 at 4 p.m. in New York, surpassing the previous high of 2,276.98 reached on Jan. 6. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has hovered below 20,000 since mid-December without crossing it, climbed 0.6 percent to 19,912.71.
* Material shares up 2.5% with a 8.3% rally in Freeport as all but one company in the 25-member index advanced
* Financial stocks rally 1.2% with all but one company in the 63-stock index closing higher; S&P 500 banks add 1.4%
* Energy stocks add 1% with crude oil up 0.7% for fourth day amid President Trump’s comments on North American pipelines
* Phone companies down 2.7% as Verizon drops 4.4% after earnings, the biggest single-day drop for the company since Aug. 2011
* VIX down for second time in six sessions to 11.1, now 27% below the one-year average and the lowest since July 2014
* About 7 billion shares traded hands, most in two weeks
* Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin said an “excessively strong dollar” could have a negative short-term effect on the economy; The dollar slumped to the weakest in more than six weeks after the remarks
* So far in the earnings season, about 13% of S&P companies have reported results, with 70% posting better-than-expected profits, according to data compiled by Bloomberg
* EARNINGS:
** After-market Tuesday: Seagate (STX), CA (CA), Discover Financial (DFS), Steel Dynamics (STLD), Navient (NAVI), Alcoa (AA), Stryker (SYK), Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), Capital One (COF), Total System Services (TSS), Texas Instruments (TXN)
** Pre-market Wednesday: Progressive Corp (PGR), Huntington Bancshares (HBAN), McCormick (MKC), Textron (TXT), United Technologies (UTX), Rockwell Automation (ROK), State Street (STT), Boeing (BA), WW Grainger (GWW), Abbott Laboratories (ABT), Hess (HES), Amphenol (APH), Illinois Tool Works (ITW), Norfolk Southern (NSC), Freeport-McMoran (FCX).

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

Man is setting out to satisfy needs that mean more to him
than simply nourishment and clothing.
He is embarking on a rediscovery of himself.
The history of man is that of his voyage toward the unknown,
in the search for the realization of his immortal Self, of his soul.
Rabindranath Tagore

As ever,
 

Carolann

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
                            -Winston Churchill, 1874-1965
                            (speech at Harvard, 6 September 1943)

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

Tel: 778.430.5808
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