December 21, 2021 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents: First day of winter; shortest day of the year!
Let us love winter for it is the spring of genius.-Pietro Aretino.

Today is 12/21/21, which, aside from being visually pleasing, is mathematically significant. According to Scott Duke Kominers, 12/21 and 21/12 both have palindrome ambigram 180° symmetry. I’ll let you Google what that means!

December 21, 1620: Pilgrims land at Plymouth, Mass.

If you go to McDonald’s in Japan, prepare to be disappointed by your French fry order.

A plunge in Earth’s magnetic field 41,000 years ago saw  auroras at the equator. 

Queen Elizabeth II will not travel to Sandringham for Christmas.  She’ll be staying put at Windsor Castle as the new coronavirus variant surges.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY
Revellers touch the Celtic carved entrance stone at the 5,000-year-old stone age tomb of Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland. Entry inside the chamber is closed for the second year because of the Covid pandemic
CREDIT: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters
Amy Russell, a shaman and healer, lighting a candle on the altar stone while waiting to observe the sunrise during at Drombeg stone circle outside Glandore in Cork, Ireland
CREDIT: David Creedon/Alamy Live News/Alamy Live News.
Dawn at Castlerigg, Cumbria
CREDIT: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
People watch the moody sky over Castlerigg in Cumbria
CREDIT: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Market Closes for December 21^st, 2021

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

Market Commentary:
     On this day in 1986, Drexel Burnham Lambert, the junk-bond investment-banking powerhouse dominated by Michael Milken, pleaded guilty to six counts of federal securities fraud and paid a fine of $650 million. Just two days earlier, Drexel’s chairman and chief executive, Fred Joseph, had said, “It’s very clear that the firm didn’t do anything wrong.”
Canada
By Geoffrey Morgan
(Bloomberg) — Canadian equities enjoyed their biggest one-day gain since February as all sectors of the S&P/TSX Composite traded higher with information technology, health care and energy stocks leading the advance. The Composite rose 1.9% to 20,924.87 in Toronto, marking the index’s largest increase since rising 2.1% on Feb. 1. Shopify Inc., Canada’s largest company by market value, contributed the most to the index gain, increasing 6.5%. Nuvei Corp. had the largest percentage increase, rising 16.4%. Today, 222 of 241 shares rose, while 16 fell.
Insights
* In the past year, the index had a similar or greater gain once
* This year, the index rose 20%, heading for the best year in at least 10 years
* This quarter, the index rose 4.3%
* This month, the index rose 1.3%
* The index advanced 20% in the past 52 weeks. The MSCI AC Americas Index gained 23% in the same period * The S&P/TSX Composite is 4% below its 52-week high on Nov. 16, 2021 and 21% above its low on Jan. 29, 2021
* The S&P/TSX Composite is up 1.3% in the past 5 days and fell 2.9% in the past 30 days
* S&P/TSX Composite is trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 19 on a trailing basis and 15.9 times estimated earnings of its members for the coming year
* The index’s dividend yield is 2.5% on a trailing 12-month basis
* S&P/TSX Composite’s members have a total market capitalization of C$3.29t
* 30-day price volatility rose to 15.38% compared with 14.20% in the previous session and the average of 12.98% over the past month
================================================================
| Index Points | |
Sector Name | Move | % Change | Adv/Dec
================================================================
* Information Technology | 115.3221| 5.3| 16/0
* Financials | 81.2918| 1.2| 26/2
* Energy | 68.1703| 2.6| 32/0
* Materials | 40.8571| 1.7| 47/6
* Industrials | 25.1912| 1.0| 29/1
* Consumer Staples | 17.0140| 2.2| 10/2
* Consumer Discretionary | 12.3717| 1.7| 13/1
* Real Estate | 11.6130| 1.8| 23/0
* Health Care | 7.8576| 4.9| 8/0
* Utilities | 4.4049| 0.5| 12/3
* Communication Services | 2.5472| 0.3| 6/1
================================================================
| | |Volume VS | YTD
| Index | | 20D AVG | Change
Top Contributors |Points Move| % Change | (%) | (%)
================================================================
* Shopify | 84.0300| 6.5| -30.7| 23.2
* Royal Bank of Canada| 15.4200| 1.2| -13.0| 25.8
* Couche-Tard | 15.3100| 5.5| 30.8| 17.1
* Emera | -0.4960| -0.5| -30.8| 15.7
* Franco-Nevada | -2.2400| -1.0| -31.8| 7.2
* Canadian Pacific | -3.2460| -0.6| -58.3| 3.7

US
By Emily Graffeo
(Bloomberg) — Stocks climbed after the biggest three-day drop since September amid appetite for risk assets. Treasuries fell. The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 rose more than 2%, with chipmaker Micron Technology Inc. jumping on an upbeat forecast. Nike Inc. rallied as revenue in North America increased, offsetting a drop in China. Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co. closed off session lows as Bloomberg News reported the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was set to authorize their pills to treat coronavirus as soon as this week. President Joe Biden said he still has a chance to strike a deal with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin to get his roughly $2 trillion economic plan through Congress. He’s also considering lifting travel restrictions on people arriving from southern African countries where the omicron variant of coronavirus was first identified. “The omicron’s potential damage to economic activity will be reasonably short and shallow,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities. “With household and corporate balance-sheets in good shape and sentiment still strong, we think it’s reasonable to expect that the economy will manage to navigate the rough waters.” Earlier Tuesday, Credit Suisse Group AG’s global investment committee slashed its stocks allocation to neutral from overweight, citing increasing risks from the omicron variant.

What to watch this week:
* EIA crude oil inventory report Wednesday
* Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda speaks Thursday
* U.S. consumer income, new home sales, U.S. durable goods, University of Michigan consumer sentiment, initial jobless claims. Thursday
* Friday: U.S. markets are closed. European markets close .earlier

Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
* The S&P 500 rose 1.8% as of 4 p.m. New York time
* The Nasdaq 100 rose 2.3%
* The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.6%
* The MSCI World index rose 1.7%
Currencies
* The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed
* The euro was little changed at $1.1282
* The British pound rose 0.5% to $1.3269
* The Japanese yen fell 0.4% to 114.09 per dollar
Bonds
* The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced five basis points to 1.47%
* Germany’s 10-year yield advanced six basis points to -0.31%
* Britain’s 10-year yield advanced 10 basis points to 0.87%
Commodities
* West Texas Intermediate crude rose 4.2% to $71.47 a barrel
* Gold futures fell 0.4% to $1,788.30 an ounce
–With assistance from Andreea Papuc and Namitha Jagadeesh.
Have a lovely evening.

Be magnificent!
As ever,

Carolann

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us. –Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900.

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