Category: Events

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Lord Byron, poet, was born on this day in 1788.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o’er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o’er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.

              -George Gordon, Lord Byron

On January 21, 1821, Lord Byron wrote in his Ravenna Journal:

  Rode out, as usual, and fired pistols.  Good shooting  – broke four common, and rather small, bottles, in four shots, at fourteen paces, with a common pair of pistols and indifferent powder…

  Tomorrow is my birthday – that is to say, at twelve o’ the clock, midnight, i.e., in twelve minutes, I shall have completed thirty and three years of age!!! –and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose.

  It is three minutes past twelve.  “  ‘Tis the middle of the night by the castle clock” [the opening line of Coleridge’s Christabel], and I am now thirty-three!

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

A water drone demonstrates maritime salvage by flying a lifesaver to a boy in the water at the world’s largest watersports trade fair, BOOT, in Duesseldorf, Germany, Friday. Martin Meissner/AP

DHL’s Twisters & Extra 300 perform during the second day of the Bahrain Air Show 2016 at Sakhir Friday. Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters

Market Closes for January 22^nd, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16093.51	+210.83   +1.33%
S&P 500	1906.90	+37.91   +2.03%
NASDAQ	4591.180	+119.124   +2.66%
TSX	12389.58	+353.72
		+2.94%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	16958.53	+941.27
		+5.88%
HANG SENG	19080.51	+538.36
		+2.90%
SENSEX	24435.66	+473.45
		+1.98%
FTSE 100	5900.01	+126.22
		+2.19%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous  % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.319	1.258
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.101	2.017
U.S.    10 Year Bond	2.0554	2.0259
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8261	2.8064

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.70811	0.70024
US $	1.41220	1.42807
Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.52492	0.65577
US $	1.07982	0.92608

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1096.25	1096.50
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	30.99	28.28

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Joseph Ciolli

     (Bloomberg) — A rally in the price of crude oil and speculation central banks around the world are prepared to tamp down financial-market volatility fueled the biggest gain since November 2011 for Canadian stocks.

     The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Index jumped 2.9 percent to 12,389.58 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, capping the gauge’s first weekly gain of the year. Nine of the index’s 10 main industries rose more than 1.1 percent, with energy, utility and industrial shares the biggest gainers. The S&P/TSX, which entered a bear market two weeks ago, fell on Wednesday to its lowest level since August 2012. It’s down 4.8 percent in 2016.

     Canada joined a rebound among global equities sparked by speculation the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan are poised to add to stimulus at the same time China reassured investors it would do more to damp volatility. Crude oil surged 8.9 percent, bringing its two-day increase past 20 percent.

     Canada’s December inflation rate was the fastest in a year, led by double-digit gains for fruit and vegetables and a reduced drag from gasoline prices. The consumer price index rose 1.6 percent in December from a year ago following the rate of 1.4 percent the prior month, Statistics Canada said Friday from Ottawa. Canada’s currency strengthened for a third straight day against its U.S. peer following 13 straight days of weakening. The so-called loonie is up 3 percent versus the greenback since Wednesday.

     All but one of the 55 companies in the S&P/TSX energy index rose as the gauge climbed 5.5 percent. Baytex Energy Corp. surged 15 percent, while Paramount Resources Ltd. and Enerplus Corp. climbed at least 9.3 percent. Penn West Petroleum Ltd. rose 15 percent to the highest level in more than two weeks.

     Raw-materials producers increased 1.2 percent as a Bloomberg index of commodities rose the most since Aug. 27. Confor Corp. and Interfor Corp. gained more than 9.9 percent, while Western Forest Products Inc. and Lundin Mining Corp. climbed at least 5.8 percent.

     Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest producer of the metal, rose 2.2 percent even after it said it may book as much as $3 billion in impairment charges as a prolonged gold slump forces it to revise its price assumptions for 2016. The price of gold was little changed. The resource has slipped 3.8 percent since the start of November.

US

By Anna-Louise Jackson

     (Bloomberg) — The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index capped its strongest two-day rally in three months, amid speculation central banks around the world will act to support the global economy even as the Federal Reserve tightens policy.

     Energy companies led, posting their first weekly advance this year, with Schlumberger Ltd. and Valero Energy Corp. gaining at least 6.1 percent. Technology shares added 2.8 percent, with Apple Inc. rising the most since August. JPMorgan Chase & Co. climbed 3.1 percent to lead a rebound by banks. American Express Co. slumped 12 percent, the biggest drop since 2009, after its quarterly earnings fell 38 percent. 

     The S&P 500 gained 2 percent to 1,906.90 at 4 p.m. in New York, the best back-to-back increase since October after turning positive for the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 210.83 points, or 1.3 percent, to 16,093.51, with the decline in American Express a 52-point drag. The Nasdaq Composite Index increased 2.7 percent, the most since September. About 9.1 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 20 percent above the three-month average.

     “I think we’re a heck of a lot closer to the bottom, and I think it’s a better time to put your foot in the water, but don’t back up the truck yet,” said Andrew Brenner, head of international fixed income for National Alliance Capital Markets in New York. “It looks like central banks are on the warpath against weakness. That’s going to put a real risk-on component to today.”

     Equities continued a snap-back from the worst start to a year since 2009, hammered as oil sank to 12-year lows amid rising supplies and concern that flagging global growth, particularly in China, will drag on the U.S. economy. Crude rallied Friday to its biggest two-day advance since 2008.

     The S&P 500 rebounded yesterday from a 21-month low as European Central Bank President Mario Draghi signaled the potential for more stimulus as early as March. Sentiment also received a boost overnight from speculation that the Bank of Japan is considering additional easing.

     The benchmark ended a streak of weekly declines at three, rising 1.4 percent in the holiday shortened period. The S&P 500 on Wednesday dipped below a level technical analysts call oversold, meaning a selloff has gone too far. A rout stoked by concerns about China’s slowdown and plunging oil had wiped off as much as $2.45 trillion from U.S. equities this year.

     “It’s a classic oversold bounce after Draghi’s comments yesterday and the noise on Japanese stimulus overnight,” said Veronika Pechlaner, who helps oversee $10 billion at Ashburton Investments, part of FirstRand Group. “It’s become harder and harder for stimulus to really support the economic fundamentals. But at least we have a bit more stable trading environment for a couple of days.”

     The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index fell 16 percent Friday to 22.34, the biggest drop in seven weeks. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX has surged about 23 percent so far in 2016, on pace for its biggest climb since a record-setting jump in August.

     Investors are keeping watch on corporate earnings to gauge the health of the U.S. economy. Analysts estimate profits of S&P 500 firms slumped 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter, better than the 7 percent drop expected a week ago. Of the 73 companies that have reported results so far, 78 percent beat earnings projections while 48 percent exceeded sales forecasts. McDonald’s Corp., Apple, Facebook Inc. and Boeing Co. are among more than 130 companies due to report next week.

     Among the few pieces of data before the Fed’s two-day policy meeting next week, a report today showed purchases of previously owned homes rose more than projected in December, helped in part by warmer weather to finish the best year since 2006.

     Policy makers have made it clear that the pace of interest- rate increases will depend on progress in the economy. While chances for a January Fed rate boost have stayed low, odds for a March lift have fallen since the start of the year, with traders pricing in a 26 percent chance, compared with even odds at the start of the year.

     All of the S&P 500’s 10 main groups rose, led by a 4.3 percent surge for energy companies. Technology stocks climbed 2.8 percent, the most in three months, with Apple’s 5.3 percent gain contributing the most to the group’s increase. Phone and financial companies gained at least 1.9 percent.

     The energy producers had the best back-to-back rally in almost five months. Williams Cos. soared the most in the S&P 500 today, up 23 percent. The shares are still down 23 percent this year. Oneok Inc. and Kinder Morgan Inc. rose more than 10 percent, while Chevron Corp. added 3.1 percent to take its two- day climb to 5.8 percent.

     Qorvo Inc. rallied 8.5 percent, the most since November, following a report that the manufacturer could pick up a power amplifier design win for the Samsung Galaxy S7 in the first quarter. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. added 7.6 percent, bringing its two-day gain to almost 11 percent.

     Consumer discretionary companies rose 1.7 percent, with Viacom Inc. adding 3.9 percent. Walt Disney Co. jumped 3.1 percent, its biggest gain since August. D.R. Horton Inc., which is scheduled to release earnings before the market opens on Monday, rose 4 percent. Amazon.com Inc. contributed most to the group’s gains, rising 3.7 percent for its best since October.

     Banks in the benchmark rebounded from four days of declines. JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup Inc. rose more than 2.2 percent. The KBW Bank Index gained 1.6 percent after sliding 6.5 percent during the prior four sessions.

     Industrial shares lagged as General Electric Co.’s 1.2 percent slide weighed on the group. The company reported fourth- quarter sales that missed analysts’ estimates, sending the shares down as much as 3 percent. Union Pacific Corp. fell 1.4 percent to the lowest since April 2013. The S&P 500 Railroads Index fell for a fifth straight day, bringing its losses this week to 4.2 percent.

     American Express Co. lost 12 percent, the most in almost seven years, as fourth-quarter profit declined, driven by a drop in revenue and higher expenses. The stock traded at levels last seen in 2012.

     Freeport-McMoRan Inc. dropped 9 percent, even as the raw- materials group rose 1.8 percent. The world’s biggest publicly traded copper producer is scheduled to report on Tuesday what analysts predict will be its fifth straight quarterly loss. Alcoa Inc. slipped 3.1 percent after rallying 5.2 percent yesterday.

 

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

Is there any motion in a straight line?  A straight line infinitely projected becomes a circle,

it returns to the starting point.  You must end where you begin; and as you begin in God,

you must go back to God.  What remains?  Detail work.  Through eternity you have to do the detail work.

Swami Vivekananda

As ever,

 

Carolann

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

-Helen Keller, 1880-1968

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

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Supernova Has Energy of Hundreds of Billions of Suns

By SINDYA N. BHANOO, NY TimesAn artist’s impression of the supernova ASASSN- 15lh as it would appear from an exoplanet about 10,000 light-years away. CreditWayne Rosing

Astronomers have discovered a giant ball of hot gas, billions of light years away, that is radiating the energy of hundreds of billions of suns. The ball may be the most powerful supernova ever seen, a study in the journal Science reports. At the center is an object about 10 miles in diameter that scientists think might be a rare type of star called a magnetar. The gas ball, 3.8 billion light years away, was spotted through the All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae collaboration. The project, led by researchers atOhio State University, aims to find supernovae using various small telescopes in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

PHOTOS OF THE DAYA skier makes his way through a snowy winter landscape on the 1456-meter-high Grosser Arber mountain near Bayerisch Eisenstein, southern Germany, Thursday. Armin Weigel/dpa/AP

A crocodile swims in a privately-owned pool in Islamorada, Fla., Thursday. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission assisted in the removal of the crocodile. Lieutenant David Carey/Monroe County Sheriff’s Office/AP

Market Closes for January 21st, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	15882.68	+115.94     +0.74%
S&P 500	1868.68	+9.35   +0.50%
NASDAQ	4472.055	+0.369   +0.01%
TSX	12044.62	+201.51
		+1.70%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	16017.26	-398.93
		-2.43%
HANG SENG	18542.15	-344.15
		-1.82%
SENSEX	23962.21	-99.83
		-0.41%
FTSE 100	5773.79	+100.21
		+1.77%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous  % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.258	1.162
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.017	1.937
U.S.    10 Year Bond	2.0259	2.0102
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8064	2.7747

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.70024	0.69133
US $	1.42807	1.44649
Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.55325	0.64381
US $	1.08765	0.91941

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1096.50	1101.75
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	28.28	26.55

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Anna-Louise Jackson

     (Bloomberg) — Energy shares led Canadian stocks higher to their biggest gain of 2016, as comments by Mario Draghi fueled speculation that the European Central Bank may bolster its stimulus programs as early as March.

     The S&P/TSX jumped 1.6 percent to close at 12,035.86 at 4:00 p.m. in Toronto. The index rallied the most since Dec. 16 as energy companies posted the biggest gains among the 10 main industries, followed by utilities and consumer-staples stocks. The benchmark gauge, which entered a bear market two weeks ago, touched yesterday its lowest level since August 2012. It’s down about 7.5 percent year-to-date.

     Global equities rebounded after $1.1 trillion was wiped from the value of stocks yesterday as investor sought reassurance from Draghi that downside risks to the euro-area economy have increased since the year began. The central bank kept interest rates unchanged at record lows. That followed a decision Wednesday from Bank of Canada policy makers, who kept their benchmark interest rate unchanged, saying stronger U.S. demand, a weaker currency and two rate cuts last year are leading the economy out of an oil slump.

     Canada’s currency strengthened for a second straight day against its U.S. peer following 13 days of weakening.

     Energy companies surged 5.4 percent, the most since August, after four days of declines. Baytex Energy Corp. jumped almost 24 percent, its biggest gain ever. Paramount Resources Ltd. soared 28 percent before trading halted temporarily and the stock closed 15 percent higher. Similarly, Penn West Petroleum Ltd. rose 14 percent after its chief financial officer said at a conference the company expects additional asset sales this year.

     Utilities stocks advanced 2.2 percent, led by a 5.9 percent gain for Transalta Corp. Shares of consumer-staples jumped 2.1 percent, with Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. and George Weston Ltd. both adding at least 2.9 percent.

     Raw-materials companies slumped as much as 2.5 percent, briefly touching levels last seen in 2005, before paring the losses to close 0.8 percent lower. Industrials stocks fell for a third straight day as Bombardier Inc. tumbled 9.2 percent to the lowest since April 1991 after United Continental Holdings Inc. said it would buy Boeing Co.’s smallest jetliners, snubbing Bombardier’s C Series.

     Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., which is attempting to acquire Norfolk Southern Corp., sank as much as 7.4 percent after reporting fourth-quarter earnings that missed analyst estimates as revenue fell amid declines in cargo including crude, metals and minerals. The stock closed down 0.9 percent.

US

By Dani Burger

     (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index recovering from a 21-month low, as energy shares rallied with oil and the European Central Bank signaled the potential for more stimulus measures amid uncertain prospects for global growth.

     Chevron Corp. climbed 2.6 percent and Home Depot Inc. surged 3.3 percent as energy and consumer discretionary companies paced the rebound from yesterday’s selloff. Verizon Communications Inc. gained 3.3 percent after its profit beat estimates. Banks in the S&P 500 slumped, with Bank of America Corp. falling 2.4 percent. Union Pacific Corp. lost 3.6 percent after its earnings missed forecasts.

     The S&P 500 rose 0.5 percent to 1,868.99 at 4 p.m. in New York, trimming an earlier 1.6 percent climb in a rebound from the lowest level since April 2014. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 115.94 points, or 0.7 percent, to 15,882.68. The Nasdaq Composite Index was little changed after rising as much as 1.5 percent, hampered in part by Netflix Inc.’s 5 percent retreat. About 9.9 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 32 percent above the three-month average.

     “It’s good to see a reversal, to know that there are still buyers out there when things are oversold,” said Aaron Jett, vice president of global equity research at Los Angeles-based Bel Air Investment Advisors LLC. “It’s a jittery market, especially in oil. I find it difficult for people to invest long with a lot of confidence right now because there is a lot of pressure to the downside. We’re speaking with clients quite frequently — there’s a lot of nervousness out there.”

     Equities alternated for a seventh day between gains and losses amid the S&P 500’s worst start to a year since 2008. Sentiment has been weighed by concerns that the slide in crude oil and weakness in China will drag down global growth, offset by occasional bouts of optimism that policy makers will act to help stem the rout. Calling the country’s market “not yet mature,” China’s Vice President Li Yuanchao said today the government would boost regulation in an effort to avoid too much volatility.                        

     European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said during a press conference Thursday that downside risks to the euro-area economy have increased since the year began, and the central bank may need to bolster its stimulus programs as soon as March amid rising concerns about the recovery. The bank kept interest rates unchanged.

     Thursday’s rebound brought a respite for investors from Japan to Germany and Brazil who have watched their stock markets tumble into bear territory. The S&P 500 has fallen 8.6 percent year to date, and is down about 12 percent from a record set in May. The gauge is on track for its fourth straight weekly decline, which would be the longest streak since October 2014.

     Investment managers are warning that the benchmark could drop another 10 percent and oil could fall as low as $20 a barrel. Jeffrey Rottinghaus, whose T. Rowe Price mutual fund beat 99 percent of rivals over the past year, also said the U.S. economy may slip into a mild recession.

     “I think people are starting to believe that while we may not be at an absolute bottom, we may be close,” said Peter Jankovskis, who helps oversee $1.9 billion as co-chief investment officer of Lisle, Illinois-based OakBrook Investments. “Oil has been a very strong theme, though I think certainly in months that are heavy in central bank decisions that central bank activity has to a degree overwhelmed oil.”                         

     Investors are keeping close watch on progress in the economy to gauge the trajectory of U.S. interest rates before the Federal Reserve’s meeting next week. Data today showed the number of applications for unemployment benefits unexpectedly increased last week to a six-month high, indicating tempered progress in the labor market.  

     Expectations for a rate hike at the Fed’s January meeting have been low since December’s increase in borrowing costs. Now, those for March are falling too, with traders trimming the chances to 20 percent, from even odds at the end of last year.

     Corporate earnings may also offer cues on the strength of the U.S. economy, with the few companies that have reported so far mostly exceeding estimates. General Electric Co. is scheduled to report results on Friday. Analysts predict profits for S&P 500 members slumped 7 percent in the final three months of 2015, while sales fell 3.1 percent.

     The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index fell 3.3 percent Thursday to 26.69. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX has surged about 47 percent so far in 2016, and is on track for its biggest climb since a record-setting jump in August.

     Seven of the S&P 500’s 10 main industries climbed, with energy and phone companies rising more than 2.4 percent. Consumer discretionary shares added 1.4 percent. Health-care and financial shares slipped, while utilities were little changed.

     The energy group reversed Wednesday’s 2.9 percent drop as crude rallied more than 4.2 percent. Devon Energy Corp. jumped 12 percent after sliding 8 percent yesterday. Kinder Morgan Inc. soared 16 percent after saying it will reduce full-year 2016 capital outlays by $900 million to cope with the collapse in commodities markets.

     CBS Corp. climbed 4 percent to lead gains among consumer discretionary shares. Home Depot had its best increase in two months after the home-improvement retailer fell as much as 5.2 percent Wednesday, briefly reaching a three-month low.

     Google parent Alphabet Inc. rose 1.1 percent to help boost technology companies. Semiconductor and equipment companies in the benchmark increased 1.2 percent. Xilinx Inc. rallied 8.6 percent after it amended contracts with five top executives to provide benefits in case of a change in control. Micron Technology Inc. climbed 8 percent, rising for just the second time in 11 sessions.

     Banks in the benchmark slid 0.9 percent, reversing a rally of as much as 1.6 percent. Bank of America slumped for a fourth day, extending its decline to nearly 11 percent over the period. Fifth Third Bancorp fell 4.8 percent to its lowest since 2013, even as its fourth-quarter profit exceeded analysts’ estimates.

     Health-care companies retraced Wednesday’s late-day gains, led by biotechnology companies. Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Biogen Inc. lost 2.7 percent. In more back-and-forth action, the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index sank 2.2 percent after rising 2.7 percent yesterday.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

Sensibility is the capacity to feel,

recognize, and distinguish the most tiny and subtle changes.

Swami Prajnanpad

As ever,

Carolann

 

Either I will find a way, or I will make one.

                    -Philip Sidney, 1554-1586

 

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

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

I usually listen to CNBC’s Squawk Box on my ride in to the office in the morning to get the market futures and financial news.  Today, I switched stations in order to listen to the Symphony station on Sirius satellite radio.  It turned out to be a good move – instead of listening to talking heads squawking about their negative perceptions on the status quo, I listed to Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 in B flat major.  A beautiful piece of music that instills calm and happiness…

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

A child pulls a trolley next to the Hahnenkamm-Rennen Stadium in Kitzbuehel, Austria, Wednesday. An alpine skiing men’s World Cup downhill will be held here on Saturday. Pier Marco Tacca/AP

Horse rider Izzy Carroll tends a horse after a frosty morning ride at Lawney Hill Racing stables in Aston Rowant, southern England, Wednesday. Eddie Keogh/Reuters

Market Closes for January 20^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	15766.74	-249.28     -1.56%
S&P 500	1859.33	-22.00   -1.17%
NASDAQ	4471.686	-5.264   -0.12%
TSX	11843.11	-159.13
		-1.33%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	16622.35	+206.16
		+1.26%
HANG SENG	18886.30	-749.51
		-3.82%
SENSEX	24062.04	-417.80
		-1.71%
FTSE 100	5673.58	-203.22
		-3.46%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous  % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.162	1.179
CND. 30 Year Bond	1.937	1.991
U.S.    10 Year Bond	2.0102	2.0556
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.7747	2.8262

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.69133	0.68627
US $	1.44649	1.45716
Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.57266	0.63586
US $	1.08723	0.91977

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1101.75	1086.25
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	26.55	28.46

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Anna-Louise Jackson and Dani Burger

     (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell to the lowest level since 2013 even after an afternoon rally trimmed what earlier had been the biggest decline in four years, as turmoil returned to global markets rattled by a renewed rout in crude and continued concerns over China.

     The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Index slumped 1.3 percent to 11,843.11 at 4:00 p.m. in Toronto, as oil plunged below $27 a barrel. The gauge, which trimmed losses of as much as 3.9 percent on Wednesday, posted its 13th decline in the past 16 days to close at a level last seen in 2013. It entered a bear market two weeks ago and is down almost 9 percent year to date.

     “Today is no different than the last several weeks — Canadian equities are especially hard hit by energy and commodity prices,” Audrey Kaplan, senior portfolio manager and head of international equities at Federated Global Investment Management Corp, said by phone. “Until we start to see some rebound there, it seems that the Canadian markets will be in a shaky, volatile ground.”

     The S&P/TSX trades at 13.7 times the forecast earnings for its members, below the index’s 15.3 average of the past five years. It’s less expensive than the S&P 500’s 15.1 multiple, and in line with developed markets in Europe, where the Stoxx 600 Index trades for 13.8 times estimated earnings.

     Bank of Canada policy makers kept their benchmark interest rate unchanged today and said stronger U.S. demand, a weaker currency and two rate cuts last year are leading the economy out of an oil slump.

     The benchmark rate on overnight loans between commercial banks remained at 0.5 percent, in a decision released Wednesday from Ottawa. Global growth will pick up in 2016, Canada’s job market remains resilient and stalling fourth-quarter growth was due to temporary factors, policy makers said.

     Eight of the Canadian benchmark’s 10 main industries declined. Shares of industrial companies fell 2 percent, led by Toromont Industries Ltd.’s 4.2 percent slump, the most in almost two years. With crude trading at a 12-year low, energy companies trimmed a decline of as much as 6.7 percent to close down 2 percent, at a level last seen in September 2004.

     “It’s not just stock prices, but the currency as well,” Kaplan said. “The Canadian dollar is cheap, but we’re still looking for a better valuation. It’s hard to tell if the level is fully pricing in the oil price trend at this point. For those who don’t have Canadian exposure, we’re not sure it’s time yet to buy.”

     The currency strengthened for the first time since Jan. 1 against its U.S. peer.

     Paramount Resources Ltd. trimmed a 21 percent selloff, falling 5.8 percent to an 18-year low on news it may sell certain midstream assets. Similarly, Husky Energy Inc. tumbled as much as 14 percent, the most ever, after it said Tuesday it’s suspending dividend payments and cutting spending. The stock ended the session down 3.3 percent.

     Raw-materials companies rose 0.8 percent after a four-day selloff, led by gains of at least 8 percent for B2Gold Corp. and Kinross Gold Corp. Iamgold Corp. advanced 9.5 percent after an analyst at Raymond James upgraded the stock to market perform from underperform. New Gold Inc. rose 8.4 percent, the most in three months, after the company said 2015 gold output exceeded it’s prior outlook.

     Health-care companies also gained for a second straight day, adding 0.1 percent.

US

By Dani Burger and Anna-Louise Jackson

     (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index reaching a 21-month low, following a renewed selloff across stocks worldwide as skepticism about the strength of the global economy intensified.

     A late-day rally paced by health-care and small-cap shares helped trim declines, with the Nasdaq Composite Index briefly erasing a drop of as much as 3.7 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 cut their worst losses by more than half. Energy companies sank further into five-year lows as oil plunged. International Business Machines Corp. fell to the lowest since 2010 after its earnings forecast missed projections.

     The S&P 500 dropped 1.2 percent to 1,859.33 at 4 p.m. in New York, closing at its lowest level since April 2014. The gauge pared a slide of more than 3.6 percent. After falling more than 560 points, the Dow finished down 249.28 points, or 1.6 percent, to 15,766.74. The Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.1 percent, and the Russell 2000 Index wiped out a 3.7 percent selloff to close 0.5 percent higher.

     “We were oversold and we didn’t keep falling off the table,” said Walter “Bucky” Hellwig, who helps manage $17 billion as a senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama. “The last-hour strength is positive, and I think it’s due to the fact that investors are saying, ‘This thing is oversold, I’m going to put some money to work,’ and it’s worked out better than buying it on the up days and then watching it disappear.”

     Even with the final-hour rebound, the selling remained broad-based, with six of the S&P 500’s 10 main groups falling at least 1.3 percent. Exxon Mobil Corp. sank 4.2 percent, the most since August, and banks fell for a third day with Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. down more than 3.4 percent.

     Global equities’ worst-ever start to a year deepened as oil continued its collapse and a slowdown in China weighs on sentiment. Japanese shares joined benchmark indexes in China and Europe in tumbling into a bear market today. West Texas Intermediate crude futures slumped 6.7 percent to $26.55 a barrel.

     “What the market is focused on is Chinese hard-landing fear, oil prices and the strength in the dollar,” said Phil Orlando, who helps oversee $360 billion as chief equity-market strategist at Federated Investors Inc. in New York. “We haven’t hit bottom yet. That’s when we start talking about the need to retest the summer lows and holding at that level to take us to long-term support.”

     About $2.2 trillion has been wiped off the value of U.S. stocks this year through yesterday, with the S&P 500 down 9 percent. And any rallies are getting shakier: nerves are weakening in a market where everything from China to oil and the Federal Reserve are proving capable of knocking equities down at any time. It’s a reversal of the optimism that underpinned the last three years of the bull market, when traders viewed bad news as transitory and used declines as opportunities to buy the dip.

     The S&P 500’s plunge triggered a technical signal that indicates it’s oversold. The gauge’s relative strength index, which measures whether gains or losses have been too fast to sustain, dipped to 30, a threshold that indicates a rebound may materialize. The RSI last fell below 30 on Jan. 13. The prior time it was that low was on Aug. 25, when the S&P 500 hit a bottom and rallied 6.5 percent over the next three days.

     The main U.S. equity benchmark is nearly 13 percent below its all-time high set in May, after rallying to within 1 percent of the record as recently as Nov. 3. The S&P 500 trades at 14.9 times the forecast earnings of its members, in line with the index’s average of the past five years. It’s more expensive than developed markets in Europe, where the Stoxx 600 Index trades for 13.6 times estimated earnings.

     Along with valuations, investors are keeping close watch on progress in the economy to gauge the potential pace of future interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve. The central bank’s next policy meeting concludes a week from today.

     Data today showed the cost of living in the U.S. dropped in December, led by a slump in commodities that’s roiling global markets. Excluding food and fuel, the so-called core index rose less than forecast with the smallest gain in four months. A separate report showed new-home construction unexpectedly fell in December, indicating the industry lost some momentum entering 2016.

     Concerns about weaker growth are overshadowing the corporate earnings season, where most of the few companies that have reported so far have exceeded estimates. Verizon Communications Inc., General Electric Co. and Starbucks Corp. are among S&P companies scheduled to release financial results this week. Analysts predict profits slumped 7 percent in the final three months of 2015, while sales fell 3.1 percent.

     “A few people are calling this a good buying opportunity, but nobody seems willing to really stick their neck out,” said Ross Yarrow, director of U.S. equities at Robert W. Baird & Co. in London. “All the concerns go back to China and oil. We’re already seeing a big impact in the lack of trade across the world. There isn’t much out there that can really support a lasting rally.”

     The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index rose 5.9 percent Wednesday to 27.59, after jumping more than 23 percent. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX has surged 51 percent so far in 2016. About 12.5 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 67 percent above the three-month average.                       

     Nine of the S&P 500’s main groups fell today. Energy companies dropped 2.9 percent, while utilities and financial shares tumbled more than 2.1 percent to lead declines. Devon Energy Corp. fell 8.1 percent, while ConocoPhillips and Halliburton Co. declined more than 4.4 percent.

     Financial companies were the biggest drag on the benchmark index, led by banks. JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped 2.6 percent, Bank of America fell to a more than two-year low and Citigroup sank to a three-year nadir. Among the broader group, Charles Schwab Corp. decreased 4.7 percent.

     Consumer discretionary companies, one of the few industries to finish with gains Tuesday, erased the advance today, falling 1 percent. Wynn Resorts Ltd. dropped 4.7 percent, paring an earlier 11 percent tumble. Netflix Inc. was little changed, after earlier losing 10 percent. The online video company reported stronger-than-expected subscriber additions worldwide last quarter, though growth in U.S. subscribers was less than anticipated.

     Tiffany & Co. and Target Corp. slumped more than 2.3 percent as retailers in the benchmark fell to a three-month low. Home Depot Inc. lost 2.8 percent, falling for the fourth time in five days.

     IBM paced the retreat among technology companies, down 4.9 percent, while Cisco Systems Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. decreased more than 3.2 percent. Apple Inc. erased a 3.4 percent selloff to close little changed. Twitter Inc. surged as much as 14 percent from an all-time low yesterday amid takeover speculation.

     Drug developers were outliers amid the market’s pullback, with the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index erasing an earlier 3.3 percent drop to rally 2.7 percent. Celgene Corp. and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. increased more than 3.3 percent.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

We cross the infinite with every step, and encounter the eternal with every second.

Rabindranath Tagore

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.

                                    -John C. Maxwell, 1947-

 

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

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

from  A COUNTRYWOMAN’S NOTES:

Some people are far more sensitive to light than others and are at their happiest when there is plenty of sunlight and they can throw open the windows and walk outside.  None of us is immune to seasonal changes, though we may think we are, but we are certainly less so than plants and animals.  Fading and increasing light tells them to hibernate or drop their leaves, mate or be active.  I welcome winter as a time when I can slightly change my way of life, stay indoors more, read, and give way to a lethargy I do not have in summer.  I am aware that the light as it meets our eyes produces a set of nerve impulses that travel  to the gland between the hemispheres of our brain, and that the hormones in this gland have a powerful effect on our sleep as well as our mood, so perhaps my lethargy is quite natural.  “A sad tale’s best for winter”, wrote

Shakespeare.  I believe he meant this to fit the winter mood of the reader.  I have just talked to a friend who is moving back to London after two winters and a summer in the country.  She says she feels depressed in the country and wants the companionship and activity of town life.  I am wondering if it is really the lack of sunlight through the naturally short days that she is missing rather than the glitter of town lights.  Soon spring will be with us and the days much longer, so our spirits should be lightened too. –Rosemary Verey, Gryffon Publications, 1989.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Waves crash on the seafront at the Corniche in Beirut, Lebanon on Tuesday. Hassan Ammar/AP

 

This picture taken through the window of a car shows a couple standing under an umbrella to shield themselves from heavy rain on the seafront at the Corniche, or waterfront promenade, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday. Hassan Ammar/AP

Market Closes for January 19^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16016.02	+27.94     +0.17%
S&P 500	1881.33	+1.00   +0.05%
NASDAQ	4476.949	-11.468   -0.26%
TSX	12002.24	+60.07
		+0.50%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17048.37	+92.80
		+0.55%
HANG SENG	19635.81	+398.36
		+2.07%
SENSEX	24479.84	+291.47
		+1.21%
FTSE 100	5876.80	+96.88
		+1.68%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous  % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.179	1.163
CND. 30 Year Bond	1.991	1.984
U.S.    10 Year Bond	2.0556	2.0347
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8262	2.8140

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.68627	0.68747
US $	1.45716	1.45461
Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.59002	0.62892
US $	1.09118	0.91644

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1086.25	1089.20
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	28.46	29.42

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Anna-Louise Jackson

     (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rose for only the third time this year, as Chinese growth data eased investor concern over a hard landing in the world’s second-largest economy a day before the central bank makes its interest-rate decision.

     Seven of the 10 main industries advanced, as the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Index gained 0.5 percent to close at 12,002.24 at 4:00 p.m. in Toronto. The gauge rebounded after slumping 1.1 percent yesterday when it fell to the lowest since June 2013. The index, which entered a bear market almost two weeks ago, has tumbled 7.8 percent year-to-date.

     More than half the market has put its money on the Bank of Canada cutting its benchmark interest rate back to a record low of 0.25 percent on Wednesday, as oil’s relentless collapse shows no signs of abating and weakness has cropped up elsewhere in the economy.

     Trading Tuesday was volatile, with the Canadian benchmark erasing early gains before rallying into the close to finish higher. The move mimicked action in global equities, as crude resumed its slump below $29 a barrel. The country’s currency weakened for a 13th straight day against its U.S. peer, falling to the lowest since April 2003.

     Canada’s largest consumer companies led Tuesday’s rally, gaining 1.5 percent, with Cogeco Cable Inc. rising 7.1 percent for its biggest advance in seven years. Technology shares increased 1.4 percent. Materials producers fell for a fourth consecutive day, slipping 2.1 percent to the lowest since May 2005 and down 7.9 percent year to date.

     Progressive Waste Solutions Ltd. jumped almost 11 percent, the most ever, to a level last seen in April. U.S.-based Waste Connections Inc. agreed to buy Ontario-based Progressive Waste Tuesday, moving the tax domicile for its garbage-hauling business to Canada. Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Corp. gained 15 percent, the most in seven months, after an analyst at Canaccord Genuity raised the stock to buy from hold.

     Baytex Energy Corp. tumbled 17 percent, the most ever, to a record low, while Silver Standard Resources Inc. slipped almost 14 percent to the lowest since March. Yamana Gold Inc. fell 8.1 percent, its fourth consecutive day of declines, after Macquarie Research downgraded the stock to neutral from the equivalent of buy. Iamgold Corp. fell 13 percent to the lowest since July after the mining company cut its guidance.

US

By Dani Burger and Anna-Louise Jackson

     (Bloomberg) — The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed a volatile session little changed, near the lowest level since August as gains in consumer shares offset declines in commodity companies amid fresh signs of weakness in crude oil and corporate earnings.

     Stocks couldn’t sustain an opening rally and weakened throughout the day before rebounding after reaching the lows of August’s selloff. Selling intensified again in small-cap shares, and crude prices remained an influence on fragile sentiment. Chevron Corp. dropped 2.6 percent, and Bank of America Corp. also weighed, falling 1.5 percent. Procter & Gamble Co. added 2.3 percent, the most in six weeks. Netflix Inc. rose in after- hours trading following its quarterly report.

     The S&P 500 gained less than 0.1 percent to 1,881.33 at 4 p.m. in New York, after a whipsaw session that saw the gauge rise as much as 1.1 percent and fall 0.8 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 27.94 points, or 0.2 percent, to 16,016.02. The Nasdaq Composite Index sank 0.3 percent, and the Russell 2000 Index dropped 1.3 percent to the lowest since July 2013. About 9.4 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 27 percent above the three-month average.

     “The market got down to that 1,865 level again, and we did seem to gain momentum,” said Robert Pavlik, who helps oversee $9.1 billion as chief market strategist at Boston Private Wealth. “Once it hit that technical level, we saw the market turn around almost automatically. It’s a step in the right direction. Coming off a very oversold level, the fact that we held that level from September suggests we could have a near- term bounce.”

     U.S. shares had rallied early as European and Asian stocks rose amid speculation of further Chinese state stimulus aid. A report showed gross domestic product in the world’s second- largest economy expanded 6.9 percent in 2015, just shy of the government’s 7 percent target, and the least since 1990.

     Crude continued to fall Tuesday, with West Texas Intermediate futures losing 3.3 percent. The International Energy Agency trimmed its 2016 estimates for global oil demand amid weakness in China. Markets could “drown in oversupply,” sending prices even lower as demand growth slows and Iran revives exports with the end of sanctions, according to the agency.

     The S&P 500’s renewed selling sent the gauge toward a technical signal that indicates it’s oversold. Its relative strength index, which measures whether gains or losses have been too fast to sustain, fell to 30, a threshold indicating a rebound may materialize.

     The last time the RSI slipped below that level was on Jan. 13, the day before a 1.7 percent rally. The time prior to that was on Aug. 25, when the S&P 500 hit a bottom and rallied 6.5 percent over the next three days.

     The S&P 500 trades at 15.2 times the forecast earnings of its members, in line with the index’s average of the past four years. It’s more expensive than developed markets in Europe, where the Stoxx 600 Index trades for 14.1 times estimated earnings.

     The equity benchmark is down almost 12 percent from its record set last May, and has slumped 9.3 percent since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates last month for the first time since 2006. Meanwhile, a measure of volatility has jumped the most since a selloff in August which sent the S&P 500 into its first correction in four years.

     The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index fell 3.6 percent Tuesday to 26.05. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX is up 43 percent this month.                      

     “I don’t think we’ve resolved all the issues in the market,” said Nick Sargen, who helps manage $46.2 billion as chief economist and senior investment adviser for Fort Washington Investment Advisors Inc. “The questions left are how much is China’s economy in fact slowing down, and when will we see a floor for the price of oil.”

     While investors fret over the impact China’s slowdown will have on global growth, the International Monetary Fund cut its world growth outlook as the commodities slump and political gridlock push Brazil deeper into recession, plunging oil prices hobble Mideast crude producers and the rising dollar curbs U.S.  prospects.

     The fund also said risks to the global outlook remain tilted to the downside, with the world facing three big adjustments: the emerging-market slowdown, China’s shift to growth driven less by exports and manufacturing and the Fed’s gradual exit from ultra-low interest rates.

     U.S. data today showed confidence among homebuilders was unchanged at the start of year, indicating the residential real estate market was sustaining the steady progress made in 2015.                       

     Corporate earnings are gathering more attention with investors weighing the health of the U.S. economy. Analysts project profits for index members fell 7 percent in the fourth quarter. Netflix advanced 7.3 percent as of 4:42 p.m. after it added 5.6 million online subscribers in the fourth quarter, beating analysts’ expectations as international growth made up for slower domestic gains.

     Five of the 10 main groups in the S&P 500 fell, with energy losing 2.2 percent and raw-materials down 1.2 percent. Utilities, phone companies and consumer staples increased at least 1.1 percent.

     Energy companies slid further into five-year lows, with Chesapeake Energy Corp. tumbling more than 13 percent, while Exxon Mobil Corp. lost 1.5 percent. Miner Freeport-McMoRan Inc. sank 9 percent to lead raw-materials lower, even as copper prices rose today. Alcoa Inc. dropped 2.3 percent to its lowest in almost seven years.

     Viacom Inc. and Macy’s Inc. helped power gains in consumer discretionary shares after the group fell for a sixth week out of seven. Macy’s rose 2.3 percent after David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital LLC reported a new position in the retailer. Greenlight said in a letter that a private equity firm and a real estate investment trust could team up to purchase the company and “unlock the value” of its land and buildings.

     Meanwhile, Viacom advanced 4.7 percent after the media giant was said to be targeted by an activist investor. SpringOwl Asset Management called on Chairman Sumner Redstone and Chief Executive Officer Philippe Dauman to step down from the New York-based media company.

     The second-biggest U.S. lender, Bank of America said profit rose 9.4 percent thanks to fixed-income trading revenue. Still, shares erased early gains to fall as much as 3.1 percent after Chief Financial Officer Paul Donofrio said on a call with analysts that revenue growth will be “challenging,” even as the U.S. economy improves.

     Banks in the S&P 500 fell 0.9 percent, led by Comerica Inc.’s 3.7 percent decline, even after it reported better-than- estimated fourth-quarter profits. KeyCorp dropped 1.6 percent and Citigroup Inc. lost 1.3 percent to bring its 2016 slump to 19 percent.

     Morgan Stanley added 1.1 percent after briefly erasing an earlier 4.5 percent surge. Its earnings were better-than- estimated and the company plans to cut at least $1 billion in costs by next year.
 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

The important question for me is,

is the body a source for creating, for realizing yourself,

for realizing what life is all about?  You ask this question

and you go where it takes you and then you ask another question

and then again you follow.  So this understanding of the body, of the unity within the body

and the innumerable areas which it reveals to you is what I call realization.

Chandralekha

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

The most important thing is to stay positive.

                               -Saku Koivu, 1974-

 

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

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Interesting…

Microbes found in the stomach of a prehistoric hunter dubbed “Otzi” are giving scientists new clues about the migration patterns of humans thousands of years ago. By 

ROBERT LEE HOTZ

Microbes that once troubled the stomach of a prehistoric hunter known as “Otzi the Iceman,” who died on an Alpine glacier 5,300 years ago, are offering researchers a rare insight into the early settlement of Europe.

In findings reported Thursday in Science, an international research group analyzed remnants of ulcer-causing microbes called Helicobacter pylori exhumed from the well-preserved mummy of the Neolithic nomad. With modern DNA sequencing technology, they reconstructed the genetic structure of this ancient microbe—the oldest known pathogen sequenced so far.

By comparing the specimen to modern variants, they discovered that this early European wanderer was infected with a strain that survives today only in India and South Asia, and not those more prevalent in modern Europe. The finding suggests that multiple waves of migrants settled the region, introducing new strains of the bacteria as they intermingled, they said.

 “This one genome has put things into wonderful perspective for us,” said evolutionary biologist Yoshan Moodley of the University of Venda in South Africa, who helped analyze the bacteria’s genome. “It is mind-boggling, really.”

Otzi the Iceman, as he is popularly known, is one of the most well-studied corpses in the history of forensic medicine.

Since two German hikers stumbled over his mummy in 1991, researchers have probed, prodded, biopsied, X-rayed, and CAT-scanned the remains. They have noted his healed bone fractures, diagnosed hints of Lyme disease, examined the food stuck between his teeth, and mulled the meaning of his 61 tattoos. They analyzed his own genetic inheritance, including the DNA of the energy-producing mitochondria that powered his cells.

“We know he had a rough lifestyle,” said Frank Maixner at the European Academy Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, who led the team of 23 scientists. “We found a lot of pathological conditions.”

 Mountaineers with Otzi where he was found in the Alps in 1991. PHOTO: GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY IMAGES

In the new study, they defrosted the mummy and rummaged through the contents of his stomach. There, they recovered evidence of a microbe that has infected humankind for so many thousands of years that distinctive strains evolved as anatomically modern humans migrated out of Africa in successive waves starting about 60,000 years ago. It serves as a biomarker for the global travels of humankind.

“The Iceman’s strain must have been the original population that inhabited the stomachs of Europeans 5,000 years ago,” Dr. Moodley said.

That ancestral strain apparently mixed with variants thought to have originated more recently in North Africa, to create the variant common in Europe today. All told, strains of Helicobacter pylori infect about half the world’s population.

The researchers also determined that the bacteria had inflamed his stomach lining, indicating that the prehistoric hunter, fleeing into the icy highlands where he was shot in the back with an arrow and beaten, may have been feeling ill on the day he was murdered.

The oldest previous pathogen to have had its genome sequenced involved samples of microbes that caused outbreaks of plague during the heyday of the Roman Empire about 1,500 years ago. That DNA was from ancient samples of the pathogen Yersinia pestis, which caused two of the world’s most devastating plagues, the Black Death and Plague of Justinian—each responsible for killing as many as half the people then in Europe.

A reconstruction of what Otzi the Iceman may have looked like. PHOTO: EURAC/MARION LAFOGLER

PHOTOS OF THE DAY
The sun reflects in the water of Brouwersgracht canal seen through the mechanism of a draw bridge, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday.Peter Dejong/AP

An environmental activist wears a mask made from tree bark as he takes part in march in defense of Europe’s last ancient forest, the Bialowieza Primeval Forest, in Warsaw, Poland, Sunday. Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Market Closes for January 18^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	15988.08	Closed
S&P 500	1880.29	Closed
NASDAQ	4488.418	Closed
TSX	11942.17	-131.29
		-1.09%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	16955.57	-191.54
		-1.12%
HANG SENG	19237.45	-283.32
		-1.45%
SENSEX	24188.37	-266.67
		-1.09%
FTSE 100	5779.92	-24.18
		-0.42%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous  % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.163	1.148
CND. 30 Year Bond	1.984	1.980
U.S.    10 Year Bond	2.0347	2.0347
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8140	2.8133

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.68747	0.68796
US $	1.45461	1.45358
Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.58390	0.63135
US $	1.08905	0.91823

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1089.20	1093.75
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	29.42	31.20

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Gerrit De Vynck

     (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell, as declining oil prices dragged down the country’s energy companies.

     The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index dropped 1.1 percent to 11,942.17 as U.S. benchmark oil fell to $28.94 in electronic trading as Iran began efforts to boost production after international sanctions were lifted, heralding more supply for a global economy already awash in oil.

     Kelt Exploration Ltd. and Penn West Petroleum Ltd. led decliners among energy producers, both falling more than 6.5 percent. Canadian Oil Sands surged 11 percent to C$8.27 after agreeing to a sweetened takeover offer from Suncor Energy Inc, which clinched the deal after it raised its all-stock offer by 12 percent to C$4.2 billion. Suncor fell 4.6 percent to C$29.77.

     The session followed one of the worst weeks for Canadian stocks in history, as commodity prices tumbled amid speculation China’s economic growth will slow, crimping global demand.

     Monday’s volume on the S&P/TSX was 61 percent lower than average as U.S. markets were closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. European stocks fell for a third day while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.4 percent, led by small cap stocks.

US

US markets were closed for Martin Luther King Day

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

Self is not something as opposed to something else,

it is sunya: we are also all things;

the self represented in all forms, good or bad,

not exclusively or exhaustively in any.

Ramchandra Gandhi

 

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

The time is always right to do what is right.

          -Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968

 

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

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Martin Luther King’s birthday today.  The US markets will be closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Day.

From The Book of Holidays Around the World:

In 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger.  She had defied segregation, which required blacks to sit in the rear of southern buses, and she was fined $14.  The incident led to a boycott  of the city’s buses, and Martin Luther King Jr, a minister who was born on January 15, 1929, was chosen to lead it.  A year later, the city’s buses were integrated.  King  subsequently organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to promote civil rights and in 1964 won the Nobel Peace Prize.  By the age of 39, when he was assassinated, he had inspired millions to share his dream of equality.

From Martin Luther King Jr:

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
                                                                  -MLK, quoting Martin Luther

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
                                                                         -The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
                                                                               –The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
                                                                        -Letter From Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

I said to my children, “I’m going to work and do everything that I can to see that you get a good education.  I don’t ever want you to forget that there are millions of God’s children who will not and cannot get a good education and I don’t ever want you feeling that your are better than they are.  For you will never be what you ought to be until they are what they ought to be.”
                                                                                 -MLK, January 7, 1968

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lunching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
                                                             -MLK, Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1962

www.thekingcenter.com

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

A section of ‘The Travellers’ by Cedric Le Borgne is seen suspended above St. James’s Square before being illuminated as part of the ‘Lumiere’ festival in London Thursday. The event, which takes place over four evenings in the capital, sees the illumination of famous landmarks and the display of artworks by international artists. Toby Melville/Reuters

Entomologist Anna Platoni poses with a blue morpho and pale owl butterflies on a floral hat made and designed by florist Emma Reynolds to celebrate the opening of ‘Butterflies in the Glasshouse’ at RHS Garden Wisley near Woking in Britain Friday. At the annual event, hundreds of butterflies from 40 different species, including the king swallowtail and malay lacewing, are released in the glasshouse from pupae. Luke Macgregor/Reuters

Market Closes for January 15^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	15988.08	-390.97   -2.39%
S&P 500	1880.29	-41.55   -2.16%
NASDAQ	4488.418	-126.585   -2.74%
TSX	12073.46	-262.57
		-2.13%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17147.11	-93.84
		-0.54%
HANG SENG	19520.77	-296.64
		-1.50%
SENSEX	24455.04	-317.93
		-1.28%
FTSE 100	5804.10	-114.13
		-1.93%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous  % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.148	1.231
CND. 30 Year Bond	1.980	2.053
U.S.    10 Year Bond	2.0347	2.0874
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8133	2.8869

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.68796	0.69688
US $	1.45358	1.43496
Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.58621	0.63043
US $	1.09125	0.91638

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1093.75	1088.40
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	29.42	31.20

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Oliver Renick and Gerrit De Vynck

     (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks tumbled to the lowest in 2 1/2 years as a rally on Thursday proved short-lived amid a rout in energy companies and the longest losing streak in history for the nation’s currency.

     The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Index declined 2.7 percent to 12,001.33 at 12:21 p.m. in Toronto, the lowest since June 2013. The rout erased a 1.4 percent surge yesterday. The gauge’s 7.9 percent plunge this year has wiped out about $150 billion in equity value. 

     “This is one of the largest peak to trough declines in oil prices in my lifetime,” Martin Pelletier, managing director and portfolio manager at TriVest Wealth Counsel in Calgary. “It is profound, it is material. It is something we can’t disregard.”

     Canadian shares joined a worldwide rout that has given global stocks the worst start to a year on record. Oil’s slip below $30 a barrel triggered selling Friday after China’s equities slipped into a bear market despite state intervention. Currencies of resource-producing nations plunged.

     Energy companies slid 4.1 percent to lead declines on Friday. Every stock in the 55-member group fell, with MEG Energy Corp. and Baytex Energy Corp. losing more than 10 percent.

     Health-care shares lost 3 percent, led by drops in ProMetic LifeSciences Inc. and Concordia Healthcare Corp. The group that includes Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. has erased 13 percent so far this year, the worst sector in the S&P/TSX.

     Gold companies, which rallied earlier this year as investors sought a haven, were among the few stocks to gain Friday as the precious metal added 1.1 percent.

     The country’s currency weakened for an 11th straight day against its U.S. peer, the most since it broke its peg to the greenback in 1970, to trade at a 13-year low.

     “When people are very negative and there’s a lot of emotion flowing, people tend to make irrational decisions,” Irwin Michael, portfolio manager at Toronto-based I.A. Michael Investment Counsel Ltd., said by phone. “We just have to sit tight, let this emotion work off.”

US

By Dani Burger

     (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks dropped, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index falling to its lowest level since Aug. 25, as the rout in oil persisted and data showing falling retail sales rekindled concern about the health of the economy.

     The S&P 500 pared earlier losses that sent it 3.3 percent lower, while technology and energy stocks led losses today.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. fell 3.6 percent after agreeing to settle a U.S. probe into its handling of mortgage-backed securities, a move that will cut its fourth-quarter profit by about $1.5 billion. Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. lost at least 3.6 percent even after reporting quarterly earnings that topped projections. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. dropped 1.8 percent after saying it plans to close 269 stores.

     The worst start to a year in U.S. equities on record has left them trading at the most attractive level versus bonds in a year based on one valuation measure. Dividend yields in the S&P 500 have climbed 30 basis points above the yield offered by 10- year Treasuries, a reversal from just last week when the payout from bonds was higher. The S&P 500’s multiple based on profits is also at a cheaper level. The gauge is trading at 16.8 times reported profits, a 8.6 percent discount to its average multiple over the last year.

     The S&P 500 dropped 2.2 percent to 1,880.29 at 4 p.m. in New York, after earlier falling to the lowest level since April 2014. Volume on U.S. exchanges was 46 percent higher than the three-month average. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 391 points, or 2.4 percent, to 15,988.08, while the Nasdaq Composite index dropped to its lowest level since October 2014. U.S. equities markets are closed Monday for a federal holiday.

     “The laser focus with the markets is on oil and weaker oil bleeds beyond the energy sector,” said Joe Quinlan, New York- based chief market strategist at U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. Quinlan, who recommends buying beaten down stocks that have growth potential like in defense spending, water infrastructure and global health care, also said, “This is one of these market moments when fear trumps all rationality. We will have to work through this panic period to move forward.”

     Oil plummeted to fresh new lows, hovering around $29 a barrel, and the Shanghai Composite Index entered a bear market. Concern over China’s slowdown and deepening crude losses have dominated investor sentiment in 2016, prompting a 8 percent plunge in the S&P 500. Losses pushed Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist at Citigroup, to trim his 2016 target on the S&P 500 yesterday. The measure posted its third straight weekly decline.

     The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index jumped 13 percent to 27.02. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX has surged 48 percent so far in 2016.

     Corporate earnings may offer cues on the strength of the U.S. recovery, with seven S&P 500 companies posting results today. Analysts project earnings for firms on the gauge fell 6.7 percent in the fourth quarter, and downgrades to global profit growth haven’t been this bad in seven years.

     Stock index futures extended declines earlier after reports showed retail sales decreased in December to cap the weakest year since 2009 and a Fed gauge of manufacturing in New York slumped. The 0.1 percent drop in retail sales matched the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The New York Fed’s Empire manufacturing index plunged to minus 19.37, lower than the minus 4 economists had forecast.

     “The growth picture in the U.S. is getting cloudier, and the fact that the Fed tightened in a weak environment is certainly not helping,” said Krishna Memani, chief investment officer at Oppenheimer Funds Inc. in New York. “The data is clearly supporting how the markets are feeling at the moment.”

     The Fed has stressed the pace of further rate increases will be gradual, but data-dependent. Traders are pricing in about a 30 percent chance of the central bank acting in March, while odds for an increase this month have stayed low since the December liftoff.

     Intel Corp. dropped 9.1 percent after its quarterly sales forecast missed estimates.

     BlackRock Inc. fell 4.3 percent after the world’s largest money manager reported fourth-quarter earnings that missed analysts’ estimates as rising expenses offset higher revenue.

     Marathon Oil Corp. and Transocean Ltd. retreated 6.5 percent or more. All energy stocks in the S&P 500 except three declined today. Goldman Sachs said in a report that oil will turn into a new bull market before the year is out as the price rout shuts down production, putting the U.S. shale-oil boom into reverse in the second half of the year. As U.S. production slumps by 575,000 barrels a day, global oil markets will tip from surplus to deficit, the bank said in a report.

 

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

I have always fought not to project but to be myself.

To retain my own scale, which is a dot, but a vibrating dot, a pulsating dot that is what I’d like to be.

I would like to remain that pulsating dot

which can reach out to the whole world, to the universe.

Chandralekha

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

Wealth consists not in having great possession, but in having few wants.

                                                                -Epicetus, 55 AD – 135 AD

 

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

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Here’s another article from Sunday’s (January 10, 1916) NY Times that is worth reading:

You Don’t Need More Free Time

                               -by Cristobal Young

AMERICANS work some of the longest hours in the Western world, and many struggle to achieve a healthy balance between work and life. As a result, there is an understandable tendency to assume that the problem we face is one of quantity: We simply do not have enough free time. “If I could just get a few more hours off work each week,” you might think, “I would be happier.”

This may be true. But the situation, I believe, is more complicated than that. As I discovered in a study that I published with my colleague Chaeyoon Lim in the journal Sociological Science, it’s not just that we have a shortage of free time; it’s also that our free time, in order to be satisfying, often must align with that of our friends and loved ones. We face a problem, in other words, ofcoordination. Work-life balance is not something that you can solve on your own.

Our study, which drew on data from more than 500,000 respondents to the Gallup Daily Poll, examined the day-to-day fluctuations and patterns in people’s emotions, week after week. Two facts about emotional well-being emerged — one that was intuitive, the other surprising.

The intuitive finding was that people’s feelings of well-being closely tracked the workweek. As measured by things such as anxiety, stress, laughter and enjoyment, our well-being is lowest Monday through Thursday. The workweek is a slog. Well-being edges up on Friday, and really peaks on Saturday and Sunday. We are, in a real sense, living for the weekend.

The surprising finding was that this is also true of unemployed people. We found that the jobless showed almost exactly the same day-to-day pattern in emotional well-being as working people did. Their positive emotions soared on the weekend, and dropped back down again on Monday.

It seems obvious why working people cherish the weekend: It’s a respite from work. But why is the weekend also so important to the unemployed?

The key to answering this question is to recognize that not all time is equal. Time is, in many ways, what sociologists call a “network good.”

Network goods are things that derive their value from being widely shared. Take your computer: Its value depends in large measure on how many other people also have a computer. This is because you use your computer as, among other things, a communication technology: for Internet access, email, Facebook and file sharing. When everyone you know has a computer, the technology is indispensable. But if you were the only person with a computer, its value would be limited.

Free time is also a network good. The weekend derives much of its importance from the fact that so many people are off work together.

To help demonstrate this, my colleague and I conducted a second study, this time using the American Time Use Survey, which tracks how much time people spend doing various activities. We found that the weekly cycle in well-being from our previous study was mirrored in the pattern of time that people spent with family and friends — which was roughly double on weekends what it was during the week. According to our calculations, this increase of social time on the weekend accounted for roughly half the spike in weekend well-being.

Again, this was the same for the jobless. Monday to Friday offers five days when the unemployed are off work by themselves, searching job ads, doing household chores and so on. While the jobless have “free time” during the week, their friends and family still have to go to work. The weekend is when the jobless fall back into sync with society.

The weekend, then, is not just a respite from work, but also gives similar relief from unemployment. It is a time when people can get what they’ve been missing: time together.

This conclusion points to a key feature of the work-life problem: You cannot get more “weekend” simply by taking an extra day off work yourself. If we were to take more time off as individuals, we would be likely to spend that time, as the jobless do, waiting for other people to finish work. We are stuck “at work,” in a sense, by the work schedules of our family and friends.

Over the past few years, many workplaces have looked for ways to create more flexibility in individual work schedules. There is no question that doing so has many benefits. But my research suggests that a disadvantage of these efforts is that they may lead us even further from a weekend-like system of coordinated social time. They threaten, ultimately, to exacerbate the decline in civic engagement and social contact known as the “bowling alone” problem.

The solution might be found in a form of constraint: more standardization of the time for work and the time for life.

               ( Cristobal Young is an assistant professor of sociology at Stanford University)

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

A flock of migrating starlings flies over the southern Israeli village of Tidhar Thursday. Tsafrir Abayov/AP

Tate employees pose for photographers with artist Phyllida Barlow’s ‘untitled: upturnedhouse’ sculpture at the Tate Modern in central London Thursday. Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

Market Closes for January 14^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16379.05	+227.64   +1.41%
S&P 500	1921.84	+31.56   +1.67%
NASDAQ	4615.004	+88.939   +1.97%
TSX	12336.03	+165.62
		+1.36%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17240.95	-474.68
		-2.68%
HANG SENG	19817.41	-117.47
		-0.59%
SENSEX	24772.97	-81.14
		-0.33%
FTSE 100	5918.23	-42.74
		-0.72%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous  % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.231	1.235
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.053	2.038
U.S.    10 Year Bond	2.0874	2.0927
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8869	2.8822

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.69688	0.69710
US $	1.43496	1.43450
Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.56150	0.64041
US $	1.08853	0.91867

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1088.40	1088.15
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	31.20	30.44

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Dani Burger

     (Bloomberg) — Carnage in Canadian stocks abated, at least for now, as the nation’s benchmark index reversed morning losses to post its best day of the year after crude prices held above $31 a barrel.

     The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Index advanced 1.4 percent to 12,336.03 at 4 p.m. in Toronto, trimming its loss in 2016 to 5.2 percent. The index joined a rally in U.S. stocks after oil’s rebound from 12-year lows fueled speculation that equities declines had gone too far too fast this year. 

     Energy companies rallied 3.8 percent to lead advances on Thursday, while Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. reversed early losses to post a 5.4 percent gain and lead health-care shares higher. Oil companies Kelt Exploration Ltd. and Paramount Resources Ltd. gained as much as 13 percent.

     Brent rebounded after an attack on OPEC member Indonesia. The global benchmark for crude had slid on Wednesday below $30 a barrel for the first time since April 2004 amid speculation that sanctions on Iran may be lifted by next money. Oil and gas producers were the worst performers last year, plummeting 26 percent.

     Material stocks were the only to decline in the S&P/TSX today as the Bloomberg Commodities Index was little changed after dropping to the lowest since 1991 on Tuesday. Gold companies, which rallied earlier this year as investors sought a haven, took a hit as risk-on sentiment returned to the market. Yamana Gold Inc. and Alamos Gold Inc. both dropped 10 percent.

     Canada’s resource-rich index was the second of seven countries to see its benchmark enter a bear market, capping a 20 percent slide on Jan. 7.

     Air Canada tumbled 9.2 percent to its lowest level since October 2014. Raymond James downgraded the airline, citing a poor expansion strategy and it’s capital expenditure commitments.

US

By Joseph Ciolli

     (Bloomberg) — Energy and health-care shares led a rebound in U.S. stocks, as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index followed the steepest selloff since September with its strongest gain in a month, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied more than 220 points.

     Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. jumped at least 4.5 percent as energy companies in the S&P 500 soared to their largest single-day gain since August. Health-care companies had their strongest advance in more than four months to recover from their biggest slide since Sept. 29. The Nasdaq Composite Index had its best rally in a month, reversing direction today after approaching a 14-month low. Intel Corp. fell in after-hours trading following its quarterly results.

     The S&P 500 rose 1.7 percent to 1,921.84 at 4 p.m. in New York, trimming in the final hour of trading a gain of as much as 2.3 percent. The Dow gained 227.64 points, or 1.4 percent, to 16,379.05. The Nasdaq Composite erased a 1.2 percent slide to close 2 percent higher. The Russell 2000 Index increased 1.5 percent after dropping into a bear market Wednesday. About 10 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 37 percent above the three-month average.

     “This is the relief rally we’ve been waiting for,” said Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird, which oversees $110 billion. “Pessimism had grown to such a level that enough cash had been raised on the sidelines to sport at least a short-term rally. Better-than- expected earnings could be something for the bulls to grasp and provide this rebound some sustainability.”

     The recovery accelerated earlier while Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard answered questions from reporters following a speech in which the policy maker, who was a vocal proponent of raising interest rates, sounded a more cautious tone. He said the latest decline in oil prices may delay the return of inflation to the central bank’s 2 percent target.

     The S&P 500’s plunge yesterday triggered a technical signal that indicates it’s oversold. The gauge’s relative strength index, which measures whether gains or losses have been too fast to sustain, fell below 30, a threshold indicating a rebound may materialize. The last time the RSI was that low was on Aug. 25, when the S&P 500 hit a bottom and rallied 6.5 percent over the next three days.

     U.S. stocks tumbled at the start of the year amid weakness in China’s equity and currency markets which fanned concerns a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy will spread. Investors are turning their attention to corporate earnings for a gauge on the stamina of U.S. growth.

     Intel fell 3.7 percent as of 4:41 p.m. after the chipmaker predicted first-quarter sales that will fall short of some estimates, held back by the continued slump in demand for personal computers. Fourth-quarter profit exceeded analysts’ estimates, while sales were nearly in line. Citigroup Inc. and BlackRock Inc. are due to report results tomorrow. Analysts estimate profits for S&P 500 members fell 6.7 percent last quarter.

     “We’ll have to digest all these earnings numbers and then we’ll have a clearer picture, but if you look around the world, there’s not many positive drivers,” said Benno Galliker, a trader at Luzerner Kantonalbank AG. “Play it safe, that’s the message at the moment.”

     The recent equity selloff is an “emotional response,”  obscuring expansion in both the American economy and corporate profits, Abby Joseph Cohen, president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Global Markets Institute, said today. The fair value for Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is 2,100, she said.

     The main U.S. equity index has declined 9.8 percent from its record set in May, and is 2.9 percent above the bottom of an August swoon, which was also triggered by anxiety over the impact of China’s weakness on worldwide growth. The gauge has slumped since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates last month for the first time since 2006.

     Before St. Louis Fed President Bullard’s comments today, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren yesterday said estimates for U.S. economic growth are falling, putting the central bank’s projected path for rate increases at risk, while the Chicago Fed’s Charles Evans said he’s nervous that inflation expectations are lower than policy makers think.

     The Fed official may have a case. A report today showed the cost of imported goods excluding fuels declined 3.4 percent last year, the biggest annual decrease since records began in 2001. Separate data showed applications for unemployment benefits unexpectedly increased last week, a sign labor market momentum may be starting to cool.

     The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index slipped 5 percent to 23.95. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX is up about 32 percent this month, on track for the most since a record jump in August.

     All 10 of the S&P 500’s main industries gained today, with energy, health-care and technology companies increasing at least 2 percent. Energy shares rose 4.5 percent, the most since Aug. 27, for the second gain in the last seven days as crude oil rallied more than 2 percent.

     Emblematic of today’s turnaround, pipeline operator Williams Cos. lead all gainers with a 34 percent rally, its largest in 13 years. It was the S&P 500’s biggest loser yesterday, with its biggest loss since 2002. Exxon Mobil posted its strongest gain since August, and Transocean Ltd. added 7.6 percent.

     The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index rallied 4 percent after slipping 18 percent over the previous 10 sessions. Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. climbed more than 5.7 percent. Amgen Inc. surged 5.3 percent to help drive health-care shares’ biggest gain in four months, a day after the steepest drop since Oct. 6.

     Consumer discretionary stocks rose, after their biggest drop in four months, with Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. and CBS Corp. increasing more than 3.7 percent. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. extended its two-day rally to more than 12 percent after assuring investors that it can rebound from its food-safety crisis. Amazon.com Inc. climbed 1.9 percent, after losing 5.8 percent yesterday.

     Best Buy Co. and GoPro Inc. tumbled. The electronics retailer fell as much as 12 percent and closed with the biggest retreat in a year after reporting its third drop in holiday sales in four years, hurt by sluggish demand for mobile phones and a broader slump in the industry.

     GoPro plummeted 15 percent to its lowest since going public in June 2014, after news of disappointing holiday sales and job cuts renewed concerns the action-camera company is too focused on a single suite of products.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

I see these things with an intense joy,

and while I observe, there is no observer, only a beauty almost like love.

For an instant, I am absent, myself and my problems, my anxieties, my troubles: nothing but this wonder exists.

Krishnamurti

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

                                                          -Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 4 BC-65 AD

 

 

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

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

This was in the New York Times on Sunday, January 10, 2016 – it’s worth the read:

Be Happy:  Think About Your Death

                           -by Arthur C. Brooks

Want a better 2016?  Try thinking more about your impending demise.

Years ago on a visit to Thailand, I was surprised to learn that Buddhist monks often contemplate the photos of corpses in various stages of decay. The Buddha himself recommended corpse meditation. “This body, too,” students were taught to say about their own bodies, “such is its nature, such is its future, such its unavoidable fate.”

Paradoxically, this meditation on death is intended as a key to better living. It makes disciples aware of the transitory nature of their own physical lives and stimulates a realignment between momentary desires and existential goals. In other words, it makes one ask, “Am I making the right use of my scarce and precious life?”

In fact, most people suffer grave misalignment. In a 2004 article in the journal Science, a team of scholars, including the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, surveyed a group of women to compare how much satisfaction they derived from their daily activities. Among voluntary activities, we might expect that choices would roughly align with satisfaction. Not so. The women reported deriving more satisfaction from prayer, worship and meditation than from watching television. Yet the average respondent spent more than five times as long watching TV as engaging in spiritual activities.

If anything, this study understates the misalignment problem. The American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, in 2014, the average American adult spent four times longer watching television than “socializing and communicating,” and 20 times longer on TV than on “religious and spiritual activities.” The survey did not ask about hours surfing the web, but we can imagine a similar disparity.

This misalignment leads to ennui and regret. I’m reminded of a friend who was hopelessly addicted to British crossword puzzles (the ones with clues that seem inscrutable to Americans, such as, “The portly gentleman ate his cat, backwards”). A harmless pastime, right? My friend didn’t think so — he was so racked with guilt after wasting hours that he consulted a psychotherapist about how to quit. (The advice: Schedule a reasonable amount of time for crosswords and stop feeling guilty.)

While few people share my friend’s interest, many share his anxiety. Millions have resolved to waste less time in 2016 and have already failed. I imagine some readers of this article are filled with self-loathing because they just wasted 10 minutes on a listicle titled “Celebrities With Terrible Skin.”

Some might say that this reveals our true preferences for TV and clickbait over loved ones and God. But I believe it is an error in decision making. Our days tend to be an exercise in distraction. We think about the past and future more than the present; we are mentally in one place and physically in another. Without consciousness, we mindlessly blow the present moment on low-value activities.

The secret is not simply a resolution to stop wasting time, however. It is to find a systematic way to raise the scarcity of time to our consciousness.

Even if contemplating a corpse is a bit too much, you can still practice some of the Buddha’s wisdom resolving to live as if 2016 were your last year. Then remorselessly root out activities, small and large, that don’t pass the “last-year test.”

There are many creative ways to practice this test. For example, if you plan a summer vacation, consider what would you do for a week or two if this were your last opportunity. With whom would you reconnect and spend some time? Would you settle your soul on a silent retreat, or instead spend the time drunk in Cancún, Mexico?

If this year were your last, would you spend the next hour mindlessly checking your social media, or would you read something that uplifts you instead? Would you compose a snarky comment on this article, or use the time to call a friend to see how she is doing? Hey, I’m not judging here.

Some might think that the last-year test is impractical. As an acquaintance of mine joked, “If I had one year to live, I’d run up my credit cards.” In truth, he probably wouldn’t. In a new paper in the science journalPLOS One, two psychologists looked at the present value of money when people contemplated death. One might assume that when reminded of death, people would greatly value current spending over future spending. But that’s not how it turned out. Considering death actually made respondents less likely to want to blow money now than other scenarios did.

Will cultivating awareness of the scarcity of your time make you grim and serious? Not at all. In fact, there is some evidence that contemplating death makes you funnier. Two scholars in 2013 published an academic paper detailing research in which they subliminally primed people to think about either death or pain, and then asked them to caption cartoons. Outside raters found the death-primed participants’ captions to be funnier.

There’s still time to rethink your resolutions. Forget losing weight and saving money. Those are New Year’s resolutions for amateurs. This year, improve your alignment, and maybe get funnier in the process: Be fully alive now by meditating on your demise. Happy 2016!

Arthur C. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing opinion writer.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Participants in a small local event pose for photographs in a sunflower field in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday. Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

A man walks in front of a cosmetics ad in Tokyo Wednesday. Eugene Hoshiko/AP

Market Closes for January 13^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16151.41	-364.81   -2.21%
S&P 500	1890.28	-48.40   -2.50%
NASDAQ	4526.066	-159.853   -3.41%
TSX	12170.41	-203.49
		-1.64%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17715.63	+496.67
		+2.88%
HANG SENG	19934.88	+223.12
		+1.13%
SENSEX	24854.11	+172.08
		+0.70%
FTSE 100	5690.97	+31.73
		+0.54%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous  % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.235	1.262
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.038	2.048
U.S.    10 Year Bond	2.0927	2.1102
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8822	2.8877

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.69710	0.70107
US $	1.43450	1.42640
Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.56150	0.64041
US $	1.08853	0.91867

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1088.15	1085.40
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	30.48	30.44

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Dani Burger

     (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks resumed declines, after posting yesterday the first daily advance of 2016, as selloffs in global equities and commodities intensified.

     The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index sank 1.6 percent to 12,170.41 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The benchmark gauge gained yesterday, halting a nine-day losing streak.

     Financial and energy stocks in the S&P/TSX contributed most to declines. Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank dropped at least 1.7 percent. Paramount Resources Ltd. sank 9.6 percent. Brent slid closer to $30 a barrel following a U.S. government report that showed crude and fuel stockpiles climbed.

     Global equities have struggled in 2016 as turmoil in China’s equity and currency markets at the start of the year fueled concern about global growth. Canada’s resource-rich benchmark was the second of seven countries to see its benchmark enter a bear market, capping a 20 percent slide on Jan. 7.

     Material stocks advanced as investors flocked to gold as a haven. Barrick Gold Corp. climbed 2.2 percent.

     The consumer discretionary sector also gained. Shaw Communications Inc. led the sector, advancing 5.3 percent. Corus Entertainment Inc. agreed to buy the company’s media business for C$2.65 billion in cash and stock, helping Shaw finance its wireless expansion.

     Among other stocks moving on company news, Magna International Inc. gained 2.3 percent. The auto parts-maker reported a 2016 sales forecast in-line with analyst estimates.

US

By Joseph Ciolli

     (Bloomberg) — The 2016 selloff in U.S. stocks intensified, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling more than 360 points, as consumer shares led the latest rout in a turbulent start to the year that has erased at least $1.6 trillion from equities.

     An early rally evaporated for a third day as declines of at least 5.8 percent in Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc. paced the selloff. Banks sank to their lowest close since May 2014, and energy companies fell as crude wiped out a 4 percent surge after data showed stockpiles continued to grow. Express Scripts Holding Co. lost 6.4 percent and biotechnology companies tumbled to weigh on the health-care group.

     The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slid 2.5 percent to 1,890.28 at 4 p.m. in New York, its lowest close since Sept. 29. The gauge fell past 1,900, a level it’s closed below only four times in the past 14 months. The Dow fell 364.81 points, or 2.2 percent, to 16,151.41, and the Nasdaq Composite Index sank 3.4 percent, the most in more than four months. The Russell 2000 Index closed in a bear market, sinking 3.3 percent to its lowest since 2013, and down 22 percent from a record set in June.

     “With energy selling off, we’ve lost a leg of leadership, which is made worse because we’ve already been seeing risk-off,” said Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist at JonesTrading Institutional Services LLC in New York. “The FANG gang is making new lows, and small-caps are continuing to get pummeled. What you’re seeing today is some pretty broad-based weakness.”

     It was another volatile session following yesterday’s whipsaw action in which the S&P 500 capped its first back-to- back advance in three weeks. The Dow on Wednesday traveled more than 470 points from the session high to low.

     Concern that turbulence in China’s stocks and currency will spread to the global economy just as the Federal Reserve is increasing borrowing costs has spurred declines in markets in 2016. The S&P 500 posted its worst-ever start to a year, sliding 6 percent last week. The benchmark has declined 11 percent from its record set in May, and is just 1.2 percent above the bottom of an August swoon, which was also sparked by anxiety over the impact of China’s weakness on worldwide growth.

     According to JPMorgan Chase & Co., this year’s tumble is at least partly attributable to robotic selling by quantitative investors who were forced to rebalance their funds when stocks and bonds both fell in January.

     “While this implies there is less risk of a sudden market crash vs. August, it is not imminent that these strategies will start buying equities,” wrote Marko Kolanovic, the JPMorgan strategist. “Moreover, if volatility keeps on rising, there could be more selling to come.”

     The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index rose 12 percent Wednesday to 25.22. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX is up 39 percent in January, on track for its biggest monthly gain since August’s 135 percent jump. About 9.8 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 36 percent above the three-month average.

     “If this week has shown us anything, it’s that no gain is safe,” said Thomas Garcia, head of equity trading at Thornburg Investment Management Inc. in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “Equities have just been out of favor early on this year. We’ve been taking our cues from what’s been going on from China, but people seem to be getting numb to that.”

     The Fed’s Beige Book survey of conditions released today said the economy expanded across most of the country in the past six weeks as the job market showed strength that’s failing to stoke broad wage pressures. The report underscores the challenge facing policy makers heading into their meeting later this month: The labor market is strengthening without triggering signs of higher wages or inflation more broadly.

     Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said today estimates for U.S. growth are falling, putting the central bank’s projected path for rate increases at risk. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said in comments also today he backs an “even shallower path” for future rate increases than his colleagues.

     After this year’s selloff brought S&P 500 valuations down to levels last seen in 2014, investors will be turning their attention to a key determinant of stock prices — corporate earnings. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Intel Corp., and Citigroup Inc. are scheduled to post quarterly results this week. Analysts estimate profits for S&P 500 members fell 6.7 percent last quarter.

     “Corporate earnings could provide some support, especially if the energy and commodities sectors are not as miserable as everyone expects,” said Heinz-Gerd Sonnenschein, a strategist at Deutsche Postbank AG in Bonn, Germany.

     Amid the carnage Wednesday, all of the S&P 500’s 10 main industries fell, with consumer discretionary and health-care shares the worst performers. Eight of the groups lost at least 1.7 percent. Utilities were little changed.

     “There’s big-time negative sentiment in the market right now,” said Mark Kepner, an equity trader at Themis Trading LLC in Chatham, New Jersey. “There’s a lot of growth uncertainty in general. Without enough news to make it go higher, and with negative sentiment, we started selling off.”

     Consumer discretionary companies in the benchmark gauge slipped 3.4 percent, the biggest drop since the August selloff. BorgWarner Inc. led with a 9.5 percent decline after providing 2016 sales guidance that fell short of previous estimates. Netflix lost 8.6 percent, the most since October 2014, while Ford Motor Co. and Delphi Automotive Plc slumped at least 5 percent. Home Depot Inc. dropped 4.8 percent, the worst in the Dow, and its steepest retreat since 2011.

     The S&P 500 health-care index fell 2.9 percent to its lowest since September amid losses in drugmaker shares. AbbVie Inc. and Celgene Corp. decreased more than 5.6 percent. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index slid 5.3 percent to a 14-month low and its ninth loss in 10 days. The gauge is down 18 percent over the period.

     Express Scripts posted its steepest drop in three years after health insurer Anthem Inc., its biggest client, threatened to ditch it for a competitor unless the pharmacy benefit manager can deliver $3 billion a year more in savings on drug costs.

     Industrial companies in the S&P 500 lost 2.3 percent, snapping a two-day gain. The Dow Jones Transportation Average lost 3.7 percent, the most in almost two years to its lowest since October 2013. Norfolk Southern Corp. and Union Pacific Corp. fell more than 3.1 percent, while Boeing Co. decreased 2.9 percent.

     CSX Corp., the largest rail carrier in the eastern U.S., fell 5.7 percent to its lowest level since February 2013 as demand for rail cargo is expected to drop this year in what Chief Executive Officer Mike Ward called a “freight recession.”

     Williams Cos. plunged nearly 18 percent, the steepest since 2002 and the most among energy companies today as credit downgrades and slumping energy prices exacerbated concerns over the $38 billion deal for the pipeline company to be bought by Energy Transfer Equity LP. Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. tumbled more than 8.6 percent.

     In an ironic twist, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., the worst non-energy performer in the S&P 500 during the last three months, was the day’s second-best performer. The shares rose 5.9 percent, the most since July after executives told analysts at an investor conference that it can win back the trust of customers and restore its industry-leading restaurant margins by 2017.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

One must become poor inwardly

or then there is no seeking, no asking,

no desire – nothing!

It is inward poverty

that can see the truth of a life in which

there is not conflict at all.

Krishnamurti

As ever,
 

Carolann

 

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know

to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

                                               -Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

 

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

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

THE POEM:
The Bright Fields
       -by RS Thomas

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it.  But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it.  I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it.  Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past.  It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

President Obama’s last State of the Union speech tonight at 9 PM EST, 6 PM PST. 

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Archaeologists from the University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit uncover Bronze Age wooden houses, preserved in silt, from a quarry near Peterborough, Britain, Tuesday. Archaeologists said they had discovered what were believed to be the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain, providing an extraordinary insight into prehistoric life from 3,000 years ago. The settlement of large circular wooden houses, built on stilts, collapsed in a fire and plunged into a river where it was preserved in silt, leaving them in pristine condition, Historic England said. Peter Nicholls/Reuters

A car covered with ice remains stranded on the waterfront in Hamburg, N.Y., Tuesday. The owner left his Mitsubushi Lancer parked overnight outside a restaurant on Sunday. By the next day, spray from Lake Erie had encased it in ice. Lindsay DeDario/Reuters

Market Closes for January 12^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16516.22	+117.65   +0.72%
S&P 500	1940.18	+16.51   +0.86%
NASDAQ	4685.918	+47.929   +1.03%
TSX	12368.73	+49.48
		+0.40%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17218.96	-479.00
		-2.71%
HANG SENG	19711.76	-176.74
		-0.89%
SENSEX	24682.03	-143.01
		-0.58%
FTSE 100	5929.24	+57.41
		+0.98%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous  % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.262	1.324
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.048	2.094
U.S.    10 Year Bond	2.1102	2.1754
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.8877	2.9690

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.70107	0.70359
US $	1.42640	1.42128
Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.54833	0.64586
US $	1.08548	0.92125

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1085.40	1100.75
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	30.44	31.41

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

     (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rallied in the final hour of trading to snap the longest losing streak since 2002, as gains from financials outweighed declines by raw-materials and energy producers.

     The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index closed 0.4 percent higher at 12,373.90, after a seesaw trading day. The equity gauge rose as much as 1.1 percent and lost as much as 1 percent on Tuesday. Toronto-Dominion Bank and Royal Bank of Canada advanced more than 0.7 percent to lead the nation’s lenders higher. Canadian National Railway Co. rose a third straight day.

     Eldorado Gold Corp. led resource-producers lower, as a Bloomberg gauge of global commodities touched a low of at least 1991. Energy companies also slid, as oil briefly tumbled below $30 a barrel.

     Equities worldwide have tumbled to start the year as concern that a slowdown in China will thwart worldwide growth returned, after the nation unexpectedly set lower reference rates for its currency.

     The MSCI All-Country World Index of developed and developing markets snapped a six-day slide while the S&P 500 rebounded from a mid-day drop. China’s central bank had earlier stabilized markets after repeatedly intervened in the offshore market. Crude posted a fresh 12-year low, tumbling 2.5 percent to close at $30.64 after touching $29.93 earlier.

     Canada’s resource-rich benchmark equity gauge lost 7.4 percent during a nine-day slide to start 2016. Canada was the second Group of 7 country to see its benchmark enter a bear market, capping a 20 percent slide Jan. 7, after Germany’s DAX Index did in August.

     Eldorado Gold Corp. sank 19 percent, the biggest drop since December 2008, after the gold mining company suspended activities at its mining project in Greece after a prolonged battle to develop the mine.

     The S&P/TSX Gold Index lost 2.5 percent as the metal retreated for a third straight day. Gold producers had rallied at the start of the year as investors sought a haven from the market turmoil in China. Goldcorp Inc. lost 2.6 percent Tuesday.

US

By Joseph Ciolli

     (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose in late-afternoon trading for a second day, paced by technology and health-care shares as China’s efforts to shore up its currency bolstered optimism that it can tame the turmoil that’s rattled global financial markets.

     Equities have been whipsawed in the first two sessions following their steepest weekly decline in four years, with early rallies evaporating only to see stocks storm back in the final hour of trading. Commodity producers recovered losses and tech shares surged, with Intel Corp. and Apple Inc. pacing the group for a second straight day. Energy companies erased a drop of as much as 2.3 percent as crude trimmed its slide.

     The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index increased 0.8 percent to 1,938.68 at 4 p.m. in New York, the strongest gain in two weeks and the first back-to-back advance since Dec. 23. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 117.65 points, or 0.7 percent, to 16,516.22. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 1 percent to halt its longest losing streak since 2008. The Russell 2000 Index added 0.3 percent after flirting with a bear market for a second day.

     “We’re slowly but surely finding a bottom in this selloff,” said Tim Ghriskey, who helps oversee $1.5 billion as managing director and chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management. “There’s some talk out there that this blowout in energy provides some technical support, and that this is a short-term bottom forming. The pullback really wasn’t based on much new news.”

     Worries that turbulence in China’s stocks and currency will spread to the global economy has spurred declines in markets in 2016 — the S&P 500 posted its worst-ever start to a year, sliding 6 percent last week. China’s measures today to defend the yuan helped ease investor concerns about a hard landing in the nation’s economy, sparking a record surge in Hong Kong’s money-market rates and deterring bearish speculators.

     The main U.S. equity benchmark’s tumble to start 2016 has left it 9 percent below its all-time high set in May after coming within 1 percent of the record as recently as November. It is 3.8 percent above the bottom of an August swoon, which was also sparked by anxiety over the impact of China’s weakness on worldwide growth.

     Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart said yesterday a global selloff in stock markets is unlikely to affect the U.S. economy, and he favors continued tightening of monetary policy this year. Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker said today the current strength of the economy, particularly “robust” consumer spending growth, “is a powerful argument” for higher rates.                        

     Investors will also be turning attention to corporate earnings, after Alcoa Inc. unofficially kicked off earnings season yesterday. The aluminum producer fell 9 percent, the most in more than four years after its sales last quarter dropped 18 percent, and the company reported a net loss as falling aluminum prices dulled the impact of cost-cutting efforts.

     JPMorgan Chase & Co., Intel and Citigroup Inc. are among companies scheduled to post their quarterly results this week. Analysts estimate profits for S&P 500 members fell 6.7 percent last quarter.

     Earnings season will “calm fears” in the U.S. equity market, Adam Parker, chief U.S. equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, wrote today in a client note. Expectations have been lowered so much for sectors like energy and raw-materials that they “should be cleared,” considering the lack of “large headwinds from macro factors,” he wrote.

     The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index fell 7.5 percent Tuesday to 22.47, adding to yesterday’s 10 percent drop after a 48 percent jump last week to a three-month high. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX remains on track for its biggest monthly gain since August’s 135 percent jump. About 9 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 26 percent above the three-month average.

     Following the afternoon rally, eight of S&P 500’s 10 main industries climbed today, with technology, health-care and consumer discretionary shares increasing at least 1 percent. Utilities and phone companies fell.

     Apple rose 1.5 percent, capping its first three-day advance since Nov. 20. Intel added 1.9 percent for its strongest back- to-back climb also since Nov. 20 before its earnings report on Thursday. Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. gained 6.3 percent, the most since August, after reaffirming its full-year sales and profit expectations following floods in India last quarter.

     Anthem Inc. and Aetna Inc. added more than 3.8 percent to boost the health-care group after the health insurers said profit will probably increase this year, ahead of presentations at a JPMorgan health-care conference. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index rose 1.5 percent, snapping its longest losing streak since September, after the gauge wiped out an earlier 2 percent slide.

     Consumer discretionary shares advanced for a second day. Starbucks Corp. added 2.8 percent amid plans to accelerate its expansion in China, while Walt Disney Co. rose 1.5 percent after yesterday ending an eight-day skid.

     Energy companies in the benchmark closed 0.4 percent higher, their first gain in five sessions, even as crude oil sank 3.1 percent with West Texas Intermediate crude reaching its lowest settlement since 2003. The resource was down for a seventh straight day, slipping 18 percent over the period. Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. increased at least 1.7 percent, while Valero Energy Corp. advanced 3.1 percent.

     Raw-materials companies were little changed, despite the price of copper sliding to the lowest since 2009. The decline came as Barclays Plc cut its price forecast and said recent data makes a recovery in the year’s first half less likely in China, the world’s biggest user. Freeport-McMoRan decreased 4.6 percent to the lowest level since December 2000, after falling as much as 15 percent.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

 

We ask ourselves

is it possible to break through this heavy conditioning of centuries immediately

and not enter into another conditioning – to be free,

so that the mind can be altogether new, sensitive,

alive, aware, intense, capable?

Krishnamurti

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.

                -Louisa May Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, 1832-1888

 

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

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

The very first rock concert I ever attended as a teenager growing up in Montreal was David Bowie’s at the Montreal Forum.  It remains in my mind as the best concert I’ve ever been to because the music and the choreography truly were an indelible experience.  This was post Space Oddity and Ziggy Stardust releases and he was full on glam.  Just as the concert was about to begin, the lights went out so it was pitch black in the stadium and all you could hear was his incredible voice reverberating throughout the room, singing the opening lines, “Ground Control to Major Tom, Ground Control to Major Tom…”  Then the ceiling became sparkling with stars and a glittering spaceship started to slowly descend from the ceiling as the music and lyrics became ever louder and more pronounced.  At the crescendo, the spaceship landed on the stage, a door opened and David Bowie emerged with microphone in hand and stepped onto the stage, whereupon the lights went on (the musicians had been playing in the dark) and the spaceship ascended back into “space.”  It was amazing. 

When I hit the tread mill early this morning and turned on the TV to watch the news, I was stunned by the news of his death.  I’d made a mental note to pick up his latest CD, Lazarus, which was released last week on his birthday, without even a single thought as to why the title was the name of a person who was, according to the bible, a close and beloved friend of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Jesus raised from the dead.   A very profound and moving farewell finale for his family, friends and fans. 

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

A woman with a Ziggy Stardust tattoo visits a mural of David Bowie in Brixton, south London, Monday. David Bowie, a music legend who used daringly androgynous displays of sexuality and glittering costumes to frame legendary rock hits ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and ‘Space Oddity,’ has died of cancer. Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

Japanese women wearing kimonos walk as they attend a Coming of Age Day celebration ceremony at an amusement park in Tokyo on Monday. According to a government announcement, more than 1.2 million men and women who were born in 1995 marked the coming of age this year, a decrease of approximately 50,000 from last year. Yuya Shino/Reuters

Market Closes for January 11^th, 2016

Market Index	Close	Change
Dow Jones	16398.57	+52.12   +0.32%
S&P 500	1923.67	+1.64   +0.09%
NASDAQ	4637.988	-5.643   -0.12%
TSX	12319.25	-126.20
		-1.01%

International Markets

Market Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	17697.96	-69.38
		-0.39%
HANG SENG	19888.50	-565.21
		-2.76%
SENSEX	24825.04	-109.29
		-0.44%
FTSE 100	5871.83	-40.61
		-0.69%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous  % Yield
CND. 10 Year Bond	1.324	1.297
CND. 30 Year Bond	2.094	2.061
U.S.    10 Year Bond	2.1754	2.1156
U.S. 30 Year Bond	2.9690	2.9094

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.70359	0.70554
US $	1.42128	1.41735
Euro Rate 1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian $	1.54343	0.64791
US $	1.08594	0.92086

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold Fix	1100.75	1101.85
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	31.41	33.16

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

     (Bloomberg) — Energy’s drag on Canadian stocks showed no signs of abating as the nation’s benchmark equity gauge slumped a ninth straight day, the longest losing streak since 2002.

     Canadian equities have lost 7.4 percent during this period with the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index failing to post a positive trading day in 2016. Crude futures in New York tumbled to a 12-year low.

     Analysts at Morgan Stanley projected Brent oil may slump to as low as $20 a barrel on strength in the dollar. Brent dropped 6.7 percent to $31.32 a barrel in London. Bank of America Corp. cut its average 2016 Brent forecast to $46 a barrel from $50.

     “Risk appetite will not return until we start to see crude carve out a bottom,” said David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc., in a note to clients.

     The S&P/TSX fell 1 percent to 12,319.25 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The gauge capped a 20 percent plunge from its September 2014 record on Jan. 7, hitting a magnitude in declines commonly defined as a bear market. Canada was the second Group of 7 country to see its benchmark enter a bear market, after Germany’s DAX Index did in August.

     Energy producers sank 2.7 percent. The group, which accounts for about 20 percent of the broader index, was the worst-performing sector in the S&P/TSX last year.

     Suncor Energy Inc. fell 4 percent to a December 2014 low, after extending its hostile offer for Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. Canadian Oil Sands fell 3.2 percent. Suncor Chief Executive Officer Steve Williams said in a statement he was “encouraged” by the number of shares tendered to the deal.

     First Quantum Minerals Ltd. sank 9.4 percent to lead losses among base metals producers as copper prices reached a fresh six-year low on concern the economic slowdown is worsening in China. Freeport-McMoRan Inc., the top publicly traded copper producer, plunged as much as 20 percent in New York.

     The S&P/TSX Gold Index lost 3.7 percent as the price of the metal retreated after posting the best week since August. Gold producers had rallied at the start of the year as investors sought a haven from the market turmoil in China. Barrick Gold Corp. lost 2.7 percent.

US

By Joseph Ciolli

     (Bloomberg) — The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed little changed in whipsaw trading, after a late-afternoon rebound paced by Apple Inc. and Intel Corp. offset a selloff in commodity shares driven by anxiety that China’s slowdown will spread.

     Apple and Intel bounced at least 1.6 percent after falling more than 7.8 percent last week. Macy’s Inc. soared 8.2 percent, the most in two years, amid pressure to pursue real-estate deals. Miner Freeport-McMoRan Inc. sank 20 percent while Chevron Corp. dropped 1.7 percent as crude and copper tumbled. Biotechnology shares extended their longest rout in three months to drag down the health-care group. Alcoa Inc. slipped in after- hours trading despite earnings that exceeded estimates.

     The S&P 500 rose 0.1 percent to 1,923.67 at 4 p.m. in New York, after falling as much as 1.1 percent. The gauge surged 1.3 percent in the final hour to erase a retreat in the first session after its worst weekly decline since 2011. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 52.12 points, or 0.3 percent, to 16,398.57. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 0.1 percent to fall for an eighth day, the longest streak since 2008. The Russell 2000 Index slipped 0.4 percent to the precipice of a bear market.

     “China may become less of a burning issue as the scenario has played out, and as the country gives some indications of managing the economic situation,” said Richard Sichel, chief investment officer at Philadelphia Trust Co., which oversees $2 billion. “As the attention moves away from China and towards earnings season, that could create a better tone for the market.”

     Technology shares shook off a 0.7 percent drop in afternoon trading to close 0.6 percent higher, while consumer companies added to earlier gains during the final hour to climb more than 0.8 percent. Banks also wiped out an intraday decline that took the KBW Bank Index down as much as 0.9 percent. The gauge closed Friday at its lowest in nearly a year.

     Alcoa fell 1.3 percent as of 5:14 p.m., even as the aluminum producer reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings after the markets closed, as demand grows for components made from the metal. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Intel Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are among 11 companies scheduled to post quarterly results this week. Analysts estimate profits for S&P 500 members fell 6.7 percent last quarter.

     Earnings were key to keeping equities from caving after the selloff in August when stocks suffered the first correction since the European sovereign debt crisis in 2011. While the S&P 500 ended down 0.7 percent for 2015, a strategy of buying shares during the peaks of four earnings season would have returned about 11 percent, according to data compiled by New York-based FBN Securities Inc.

     One of the reasons stocks have done well is the propensity of companies to beat analyst predictions when they report results. The S&P 500 climbed an average 2.3 percent over the month following Alcoa’s announcements in 2015. That’s about four times the normal rate of return for all reporting seasons in data going back to 1993.

     “The U.S.’s economy is moving along at steady pace,” said Chad Morganlander, a Florham Park, New Jersey-based money manager at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., which oversees about $170 billion. “External factors are applying pressure on earnings and revenue growth, so investors will be closely watching the companies that report this week.”

     The new year has brought volatility, anxiety about global growth and losses for equity investors. The S&P 500 capped its steepest ever slide over five days to begin a year amid a worldwide rout sparked by worries that China’s slowdown is worse than anticipated. The benchmark’s tumble to start 2016 has left it 9.7 percent below its all-time high set in May after coming within 1 percent of the record as recently as November. It is 3 percent above the August bottom, retracing a rebound of as much as 13 percent that peaked on Nov. 3.

     Investors on Friday found little comfort in December job gains that exceeded forecasts from economists surveyed by Bloomberg, but failed to spark the wage growth sought by Federal Reserve policy makers as inflation continues to undershoot their target. Fed Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart said he favors continued tightening of monetary policy this year, and a global selloff in stock markets is unlikely to affect the U.S. economy.

     The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index fell 10 percent Monday to 24.30 after a 48 percent jump last week to a three-month high. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX remains on track for its biggest monthly gain since August’s 135 percent jump. About 9 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges, 28 percent above the three-month average.

     Seven of the S&P 500’s 10 main industries increased today, with consumer and phone companies rising the most. Energy, health-care and raw-materials shares were the worst performers, falling at least 1.1 percent.

     Macy’s posted its strongest gain since November 2013 after activist hedge fund Starboard Value stepped up pressure to squeeze money out of the department-store chain’s real estate, which the firm values at $21 billion. Kohl’s Corp. climbed 4.6 percent following a Wall Street Journal report that the retailer is considering whether to hire an investment bank to advise it on alternatives that may include a sale to a private equity firm.

     Cigarette makers Philip Morris International Inc., Reynolds American Inc. and Altria Group Inc. rallied more than 2 percent to boost consumer staples shares. Amazon.com Inc. and Home Depot Inc. gained at least 1.5 percent to drive an advance in discretionary companies.

     Thirty-seven of the 40 energy companies in the benchmark sank as the group fell further into five-year lows. The price of crude oil decreased for a sixth straight day to a 12-year nadir. The resource has slipped 16 percent over the period. Consol Energy Inc. plunged 9.5 percent to the lowest in three weeks, while Exxon Mobil Corp. lost 2.2 percent.

     Health-care stocks in the S&P 500 dropped to the lowest since Oct. 6 as drug developers fell. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index declined 3.4 percent and extending its eight-day skid to 15 percent.

     Celgene Corp. lost 5.5 percent after issuing preliminary fourth-quarter and 2015 earnings that missed analysts’ estimates. The company also promoted Chief Operating Officer Mark Alles to chief executive officer, with outgoing CEO Bob Hugin remaining at the drugmaker as executive chairman. McKesson Corp. slid 10 percent, the most since March 2009, after narrowing its 2016 earnings guidance.

     Raw-materials companies fell as the price of copper slid 2.4 percent, touching the lowest since 2009 on concerns the economic slowdown is worsening in China, the world’s biggest consumer. Freeport-McMoRan, the top publicly traded copper producer, tumbled as much as 22 percent and marked the biggest intraday loss ever. Newmont Mining Corp. slipped 5.6 percent, while DuPont Co. lost 3.3 percent.

     Under Armour Inc. slumped 6.7 percent, the most in three months. Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock to the equivalent of sell from neutral, in part citing declining market share in women’s apparel and lower average selling prices in footwear.

     Among companies moving on corporate news, HCA Holdings Inc. rallied 5.5 percent after the hospital operator issued a preliminary measure of 2015 earnings that exceeded estimates. Tenet Healthcare Corp. rose 1.7 percent.

     Affymetrix Inc. surged 52 percent after Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. agreed to acquire the company in a deal valued at about $1.3 billion, adding technology used by scientists and biologists to analyze specimens at the cellular and genetic level. Baxalta Inc. declined 2.3 percent as Shire Plc won over the drug developer after adding cash to sweeten a takeover bid worth about $32 billion.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

 

Be magnificent!

My country and your country,

my God and your God – all that is the fragmentation of thought.

-Krishnamurti

As ever,

 

Carolann

 

Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.

                                                –Albert Einstein, 1879-1955

 

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