April 8, 2025, Newsletter

Dear Friends

Tangents: Buddha’s Birthday; Siddhartha, The Enlightened One.

April 8, 1862: John D. Lynde patents the aerosol dispenser, revolutionizing the packaging and delivery of products like paints, cleaners, and personal care items.
April 8, 1952: President Harry S. Truman seized the steel industry to avert a nationwide strike.  Go to article
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Florida wins NCAA men’s basketball championship
The Gators came from behind last night to defeat the Houston Cougars 65-63. This is Florida’s third national title; it would’ve been Houston’s first.

Celebrity feud ends
Madonna says she and Elton John “finally buried the hatchet” over the weekend after trading barbs for decades. When she went backstage following his performance on “Saturday Night Live,” John reportedly asked for her forgiveness — and she gave it.

Saturday… what a day
“Happy Days” stars Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, Anson Williams and Don Most reunited last Saturday at Steel City Con outside of Pittsburgh. The cast joined a panel discussion about their hit TV series and were honored by the Allegheny County Council, which declared April 5 as Happy Days Day.

Tracy Chapman is back
And she’s belatedly celebrating the 35th anniversary of her self-titled debut album by re-releasing it in vinyl. The usually reclusive singer last returned to the limelight at the 2024 Grammys to perform her hit song “Fast Car” with country star Luke Combs, who also released a cover of it.

Adorable dire wolf pups mark ‘world’s first de-extinction,’ Colossal Biosciences says
Dire wolves, made famous by HBO’s Game of Thrones, have been extinct for around 12,500 years. But thanks to genetic engineers at biotech company Colossal Biosciences, these majestic predators are back.
Read More.

How a ‘mudball’ meteorite survived space to land in the jungles of Central America
“The fall of Aguas Zarcas was huge news in the country. No other fireball was as widely reported and then recovered as stones on the ground in Costa Rica in the past 150 years.” Read More.

130,000-year-old mammoth calf smells like ‘fermented earth and flesh,’ necropsy reveals
Researchers have performed a necropsy on a 130,000-year-old baby mammoth preserved in the Siberian permafrost. Read More

AI creates better and funnier memes than people, study shows — even when people use AI for help
In a study, memes created by OpenAI’s GPT-4o model were, on average, rated funnier, more creative and more shareable than those created by humans. Read More.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Mongolians
Horses walk along a road overlooking the smoggy skyline of Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar.
Photographs: Andy Hall for the Observer

Konya, Turkey
Great white pelicans rest on the shores of Lake Çavuşçu as they migrate from north from Africa
Photograph: Seyit Konyali/Anadolu/Getty Images

Spring in London
Signs of spring as a plant comes into bud.
Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian
Market Closes for April 8^th, 2025

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

Market Commentary:
Letting your emotions override your plan or system is the biggest cause of failure. – J. Welles Wilder Jr., 1935-2021.
Canada
By Geoffrey Morgan
(Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks dropped for a fourth straight session, marking their longest losing streak since December as fallout from US President Donald Trump’s tariff plans continues and oil prices declined.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index erased an opening gain to close 1.5% lower on Tuesday as key North American equities gauges swung sharply.
Six stocks dropped for every one that gained as every sector in the Toronto market ended Tuesday’s session lower.
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., the country’s largest oil and gas producer, was the biggest drag on the index as oil prices dropped below $60 a barrel.
The Canadian benchmark, which entered a correction last week during Friday’s sharp selloff, swung nearly 5% over the course of the session.
The S&P/TSX has now posted three straight intraday moves of more than 4% — the last time the index has posted such a prolonged streak of volatility outside of the pandemic was in 2011.
By Bloomberg Automation
(Bloomberg) — The S&P/TSX Composite fell 1.5%, with 11 of 11 sectors lower, led by health care stocks.
As of market close, 170 of 218 stocks fell, while 48 rose.
Tilray Brands Inc. led the declines, falling 21%, while Kinaxis Inc. increased 3.1%.
Markets at a Glance:
* S&P/TSX Index fell 1.5% to 22,507
* 11 of 11 sectors fell
** Health care declined, down 5.7%
** Communication services declined, down 3.7%
* S&P 500 Index fell 1.6% to 4,983
* Nasdaq 100 Index fell 2% to 17,090
* Crude oil fell 3.8% to $58/bbl
* Natgas fell 4.3% to $3.50/mmbtu
* Gold rose 0.7% to $2,973/oz
* Silver rose 0.4% to $30/oz
* Kinaxis Inc. (KXS CN) +3.1%
* Iamgold Corp. (IMG CN) +2.4%
* K92 Mining Inc. (KNT CN) +2.1%: K92 Mining 1Q Gold Production at Kainantu 47,817 Oz AuEq
* Aya Gold & Silver Inc. (AYA CN) +1.7%
* Definity Financial Corp. (DFY CN) +1.4%
Decliners
* Tilray Brands Inc. (TLRY CN) -21%: Tilray Brands Shares Tumble as Adjusted Ebitda Misses (1)
* Novagold Resources Inc. (NG CN) -12%
* Vermilion Energy Inc. (VET CN) -11%
* Baytex Energy Corp. (BTE CN) -11%
* Algoma Steel Group Inc. (ASTL CN) -9.3%
US
By Rita Nazareth, Isabelle Lee and Emily Graffeo
(Bloomberg) — Wild swings lashed Wall Street for a fourth straight session as back-and-forth trade threats between the US and China knocked down stocks, erasing an earlier rally that was the biggest since 2022.
The S&P 500 fell 1.6%, leaving it on the brink of a bear market.
Hopes for a quick end to extreme volatility were dashed after a White House official said the US is moving forward with tariffs on China as high as 104%.
Equities extended losses as Chinese Premier Li Qiang said his country has ample policy tools to “fully offset” negative external shocks.
Treasury two-year yields tumbled as traders boosted bets on rate cuts.
Tuesday’s slide extended the S&P 500’s more than 10% drop since the president detailed worldwide levies last Wednesday and at one point pushed the gauge down 20% since its record close in February, though stocks bounced at that level.
It was also a fourth day of nearly unprecedented volume on US equity markets, with more than 23 billion shares changing hands.
“The volatility reflects the new situation in which no one knows what the rules of road are, or even what the desired destination is,” said Que Nguyen at Research Affiliates LLC.
“Until investors reset expectations or those rules and goals are better understood, markets will continue these wild swings between hope and fear.”
Trump spent the final hours before his sweeping tariffs were set for full implementation lining up talks with key US allies, but hopes for a last-minute agreement with China appeared distant.
Across world markets, investors have been gripped by fears that something may break in the financial plumbing amid the cross-asset volatility, spurring speculation the Federal Reserve would need to speed up rate cuts to prevent a recession even with inflation jitters running rampant.
Fed Bank of San Francisco Mary Daly said the US central bank can take its time before making any adjustments to interest rates as it waits to see how trade policy changes play out.
Her Chicago counterpart Austan Goolsbee said tariffs are “way bigger” than he anticipated.
“The fundamental reason for the drawdown has been policy uncertainty – it’s functionally impossible to put in a bottom until that fundamental reason has been resolved, or at least until there is directional clarity on it,” said Scott Ladner at Horizon Investments.
The stock market is particularly vulnerable to wild swings due to a combination of thin liquidity and headline-driven algorithmic trading.
According to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s trading desk, the gap between market volume and liquidity in S&P 500 futures is currently the widest in the bank’s data set.
“This is what happens in highly volatile markets — they overshoot in both directions,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers.
“The selling gets overdone, but so does the knee-jerk reaction to buy and chase.”
As Trump’s trade war sent markets into a tailspin, Bank of America Corp. clients posted their fourth-biggest inflow into US equities on record last week: $8 billion.
Institutional clients, retail traders and hedge funds were all net buyers, strategist Jill Carey Hall wrote in a Tuesday research note.
Warnings
Meantime, warnings from Wall Street strategists keep piling up on the dour outlook for stocks.
BlackRock Inc. strategists Jean Boivin and Wei Li downgraded US equities on Monday to neutral from overweight on a three-month horizon, saying they expect “more pressure on risk assets in the near term given the major escalation in global trade tensions.”
And a strategy team at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., including Peter Oppenheimer and Lilia Peytavin, said the equity selloff could well turn into a longer-lasting cyclical bear market as recession risks mount.

Key Events This Week:
* Federal Reserve minutes, Wednesday
* Fed’s Tom Barkin speaks, Wednesday
* China PPI, CPI, Thursday
* US CPI, jobless claims, Thursday
* Fed’s Michelle Bowman’s nomination hearing in Senate for the position of vice chair for supervision, Thursday
* Fed’s Austan Goolsbee, Patrick Harker, Lorie Logan, Jeff Schmid speak, Thursday
* US PPI, University of Michigan consumer sentiment, Friday
* Major banks reporting earnings include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Friday
* Fed’s John Williams and Alberto Musalem speak, Friday

Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
* The S&P 500 fell 1.6% as of 4 p.m. New York time
* The Nasdaq 100 fell 2%
* The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.8%
* The MSCI World Index fell 0.3%
Currencies
* The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.2%
* The euro rose 0.4% to $1.0955
* The British pound rose 0.4% to $1.2772
* The Japanese yen rose 1% to 146.29 per dollar
Cryptocurrencies
* Bitcoin fell 2.8% to $76,752.34
* Ether fell 6.7% to $1,465.6
Bonds
* The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced nine basis points to 4.27%
* Germany’s 10-year yield advanced two basis points to 2.63%
* Britain’s 10-year yield declined one basis point to 4.60%
Commodities
* West Texas Intermediate crude fell 3.5% to $58.56 a barrel
* Spot gold was little changed
This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

–With assistance from Vildana Hajric, Robert Brand, Anand Krishnamoorthy and Aya Wagatsuma.

Have a lovely evening.

Be magnificent!
As ever,

Carolann
The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.  The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle. –Albert Einstein, 1879-1955.

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
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www.carolannsteinhoff.com