Category: Newsletters

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) SLIDESHOW

And on this day in…

1776 – The Americans are defeated by the British at the Battle of Brooklyn, New York.

1883 – Krakatoa volcano, West of Sumatra, Indonesia explodes – The most powerful volcanic explosion in recorded history.

1910 –  Mother Teresa was born.

1910 – Thomas Edison demonstrates the first “talking” pictures–using a phonograph–in his New Jersey laboratory.
1952 – PeeWee Herman was born.
1979 – Lord Mountbatten killed by the IRA (bombed) in his sailboat, near Sligo, Ireland.

Be yourself. Be true to that, to your heart. Patience. See what happens if you step back instead of bounding forward. –Nora Roberts, 1950-

photos of the day August 27, 2012

Marion Bartoli of France serves to Jamie Hampton of the US during their women’s singles match at the US Open tennis tournament in New York.

Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters

Ricardo Dos Santos of Brazil competes during the third round of the Billabong Pro surfing event Sunday in Teahupoo, Tahiti.

Steve Robertson/Association of Surfing Professionals/AP

Market Closes for August 27, 2012:

North American Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	13124.67	-33.30
		-0.25%
S&P 500	1410.46	-0.67
		-0.05%
NASDAQ	3073.19	+3.41
		+0.11%
TSX	2039.69	-42.54
		-0.35%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	9085.39	+14.63
		+0.16%
HANG  SENG	19798.67	-81.36
		-0.41%
SENSEX	17678.81	-104.40
		-0.59%
FTSE 100	5776.60	CLOSED FOR SUMMER BANK HOLIDAY

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.798	1.823
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.380	2.403
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.6849	1.6848
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.7607	2.7972

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.99081	0.99235
US   $	1.00928	1.00771
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.23843	0.80748
US  $	1.24991	0.80006

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1664.65	1670.15
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	95.47	95.85
BRENT	114.03	116.03

Market Commentary:

Canada:

By Eric Lam

Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell as metal prices tumbled and a decline in oil prices dragged down energy producers amid speculation that Tropical Storm Isaac will have limited effect on crude production.

Nexen Inc., which has operations in the Gulf of Mexico, slipped 0.4 percent. Goldcorp Inc. retreated 1.2 percent. Cameco Corp., the world’s third-largest uranium miner, slumped 1 percent after agreeing to buy a uranium project from BHP Billiton Ltd. for $430 million. Research In Motion Ltd. rose 1.9 percent on speculation its BlackBerry 10 smartphone may be more attractive as Samsung Electronics Co. products face a possible ban.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index lost 33.41 points, or 0.3 percent, to 12,048.82 at 4 p.m. in Toronto. The index has risen 3.3 percent this month, poised for the biggest percentage gain since January.

“Commodities have had a great run the past few weeks, but nothing moves up in a straight line,” said Brian Huen, managing partner with Red Sky Capital Management Ltd. in Toronto. His firm manages about C$55 million ($55.6 million). “There was talk the U.S. would release some oil from its reserves. That’s why oil is down now, as there’s potential for more supply entering the market.”

Oil prices dropped as forecasts called for Isaac to go ashore in southeastern Louisiana Aug. 29 with winds peaking at Category 1 strength of 85 mph to 90 mph. The U.S. may lead International Energy Agency member nations in a joint release from emergency oil reserves as early as next month to curb rising prices, the industry publication Petroleum Economist reported on Aug. 24, citing sources it didn’t name.

Nexen, awaiting approval of a $15.1 billion takeover offer from China’s Cnooc Ltd., fell 0.4 percent to C$25.39. Crude fell 0.7 percent to settle at $95.47 a barrel in New York.

First Quantum Minerals Ltd., a copper and nickel producer, declined 1.1 percent to C$19 as copper prices fell amid concern that Europe’s sovereign debt crisis will erode demand. Copper futures for December delivery retreated 0.2 percent to settle at $3.48 a pound in New York.

Goldcorp sank 1.2 percent to C$39.58 and Gabriel Resources Ltd. plunged 7.4 percent to C$2.24. Gold futures for December delivery declined 0.3 percent to $1,667.20 an ounce in New York.

Cameco lost 1 percent to C$22.23 after agreeing to buy BHP’s Yeelirrie uranium project in Western Australia. The company is aiming to increase its annual uranium output to 40 million pounds by 2018 by developing new mines and extending the life of existing ones.

RIM gained 1.9 percent to C$7.01. A U.S. court ruled Samsung had infringed on several of Apple Inc.’s smartphone patents.

“Microsoft’s new surface tablet and RIM’s BlackBerry 10, along with Nokia’s Windows 8 smartphones, may be more appealing to corporations and carriers, especially in the near term, following the verdict against Samsung,” said Anand Srinivasan, a senior analyst with Bloomberg Industries, in a research note.

“Businesses and carriers may be wary of litigation threats or possible recalls of products.”

Shares of Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM have plunged 53 percent this year.

Bank of Nova Scotia added 0.9 percent to C$52.94 and Bank of Montreal rose 0.1 percent to C$57.70 ahead of their third- quarter earnings reports tomorrow.

US:

By Rita Nazareth

Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell, following the first weekly decline in about two months for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as investors awaited indications on whether the Federal Reserve will provide further stimulus measures.

Hewlett-Packard Co., Alcoa Inc. and Bank of America Corp. dropped at least 1.1 percent to pace losses in the biggest companies. Apple Inc., the most valuable company, climbed 1.9 percent after a jury found Samsung Electronics Co. infringed six of seven patents for its mobile devices. Google Inc., which offers the Android mobile software, declined 1.4 percent.

The S&P 500 slid 0.1 percent to 1,410.44 at 4 p.m. New York time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 33.30 points, or 0.3 percent, to 13,124.67. The Nasdaq-100 Index gained 0.2 percent to 2,782.55, after rising to the highest since 2000 during the day. Volume for exchange-listed stocks in the U.S. was 4.5 billion shares, the lowest level since at least 2008 excluding days surrounding holidays, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“There’s no great conviction in either direction,” said Richard Sichel, who oversees $1.6 billion as chief investment officer at Philadelphia Trust Co. He spoke in a phone interview.

“There are a couple of bright spots, such as Apple. People are looking ahead for Fed signals. I believe Bernanke’s speech will probably be more of the same. It’s more likely that it will be a continuation of what we’ve been hearing and less of an event.”

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke probably won’t use his Aug. 31 speech at the Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to suggest a third round of bond buying is at hand, according to economists such as Michael Feroli at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and James O’Sullivan at High Frequency Economics.

The S&P 500, which last week failed to stay above a four- year high, is still on pace for its third straight monthly gain amid bets central banks will provide further economic stimulus.

The index has risen 2.3 percent so far in August.

Commodity, phone and industrial shares had the biggest losses in the S&P 500 among 10 groups. HP dropped 2.1 percent to $17.21, the lowest since 2004. Alcoa slid 1.7 percent to $8.48.

Bank of America retreated 1.1 percent to $8.07. Technology shares in the S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent as a group.

Apple gained 1.9 percent to a record $675.68. Victories in patent disputes over phones using Google’s Android may extend, rather than end, the litigation that’s lasted more than two years and spanned four continents. The jury verdict won Aug. 24 against Samsung came shortly after a trade agency in Washington cleared Apple of some claims by Google’s Motorola Mobility unit that could have led to a U.S. ban on the iPhone and iPad.

Together, the decisions embolden Apple to continue the campaign envisioned by its late co-founder, Steve Jobs, to prove phones running on Android copied the iPhone’s features and designs. Apple won’t stop unless there’s a decisive blow against it, and Samsung, with its reputation at stake, also has little incentive to settle, said Tom Scott, a patent lawyer at Goodwin Procter LLP.

“Most commercial disputes are on the merits of the case,” said Scott, chairman of the firm’s intellectual property group in Washington. “This is different. It’s a war. It’s an economic war.”

Google dropped 1.4 percent to $669.22.

Best Buy Co. added 3.2 percent to $17.87. The world’s largest electronics retailer and founder Richard Schulze reached an agreement allowing him to conduct due diligence in his effort to acquire the company a week after earlier talks failed.

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group Inc. rallied 7.5 percent to $87.08. Hertz Global Holdings Inc. struck a deal to buy the company for about $2.6 billion in cash and secure its place as the No. 2 player in the U.S. market. Hertz jumped 8.1 percent to $14.21.

Hudson City Bancorp soared a record 16 percent to $7.45.

M&T Bank Corp., which counts Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. among its largest investors, agreed to buy the bank to expand in New Jersey in a deal valued at about $3.7 billion.

Under terms of the agreement, each Hudson City shareholder will receive 0.08403 of an M&T share in the form of either M&T stock or cash. M&T climbed 4.6 percent to $89.82.

Kenexa Inc. jumped 41 percent to $45.79. International Business Machines Corp. will spend about $1.3 billion for the maker of Web-based human-resources and recruiting services, part of its effort to reach $16 billion in annual analytics revenue.

IBM slipped 1.1 percent to $195.69.

Tiffany & Co. climbed 7.2 percent to $62.71. The world’s second-largest luxury jewelry retailer reported a drop in worldwide comparable-store sales that was smaller than some analysts projected.

AOL Inc. gained 2.9 percent to $33.86 after announcing a $600 million accelerated stock buyback agreement and a special cash dividend of $5.15 a share, the final steps in returning about $1.1 billion to shareholders.

ImmunoGen Inc. rose 5.6 percent to $14.62. Partner Roche Holding AG said its experimental breast cancer drug significantly extended the lives of patients when compared with standard therapy.

American stocks are dominating global equities by the most in a decade, taking a majority of the spots in a ranking of the 20 biggest companies, after earnings rose faster than the rest of the world as the global economy rebounded. Apple, International Business Machines Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and four more U.S. companies joined the top 20 since stocks peaked in 2007, bringing the total to 14.

They replaced Moscow-based Gazprom OAO, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. in Beijing, Petroleo Brasileiro SA of Rio de Janeiro and six others from Europe and Asia. Of the nine added, only BHP Billiton Ltd. and Nestle SA are based outside the U.S.

More U.S. corporations are represented than any time since 2003 after 10 quarters of economic expansion and profit growth lifted the S&P 500 109 percent since shares bottomed in March 2009. The shift reflects volatility in emerging markets and shows how innovation builds value in the U.S.

“The U.S. is just the best place on the planet to have a great idea and turn it into a big business,” according to Michael Shaoul, chairman of New York-based Marketfield Asset Management, which oversees $2.7 billion. “There’s another reason for this list to have shifted and that is the falling of prior darlings,” said Shaoul, whose fund beat 99 percent of competitors in the past year. “A lot of the ones which have fallen are energy and emerging-market related.”

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone!

Be magnificent!

 

Have you ever tried living with yourself?

If so, you will begin to see that yourself is not a static state,

it is a fresh living thing.

And to live with a living thing your mind must also be alive.

And it cannot be alive if it is caught in opinions, judgments, and values.

Krishnamurti,1895-1986

As ever,

Carolann

 

A man will fight harder for his interests than his rights.

-Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769-1821

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Read today that Scott McKenzie, who performed the 1967 ballad San Francisco (Be sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair), which became a defining hit for the counterculture generation and helped draw tens of thousands to the Haight-Ashbury district for the Summer of Love, died on Saturday in Los Angeles.  San Francisco was written by John Phillips, a founder of the Mamas and the Papas, who had been a friend of McKenzie’s since high school.  The two started a band called the Journeymen, which recorded several albums in the 1960s.  San Francisco hit a nerve with people looking to protest what they saw as an unjust social order, and it soared on the charts.  – News from The New York Times

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. – Leo Buscaglia

Earlier this month, this announcement was made:

University professor to study life after death

By Claudine Zap, Fri, Aug 3, 2012

Does life exist after death?

A University of California, Riverside philosophy professor, John Martin Fischer, has been awarded a three-year, $5 million grant by the John Templeton Foundation to study just this topic—and yes, students can take his class.

Fischer noted in an email to Yahoo News, “Both I and my post-doc, Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, will teach related classes over the next three years. I have frequently taught classes on death, immortality, and the meaning of life both at Yale University and UC Riverside.”

So what’s the meaning of life? More on that in a moment.

Fischer noted, “We’ll be open both to studying religious and non-religious views about immortality. One thing that we’ll study is whether human beings would want to live forever: would it be boring? Would it lose its meaning and beauty and urgency? Does death give meaning to life?”

According to the university’s website announcing the grant award, many anecdotal reports of the afterlife abound, but there has been “no comprehensive and rigorous, scientific study of global reports about near-death and other experiences, or of how belief in immortality influences human behavior.” The research will look at a range of phenomena, including heaven, hell, purgatory, and karma.  The grant is the largest ever awarded to a humanities professor at UC Riverside, and one of the largest given to an individual at the university.

Fischer said in a statement, “We will be very careful in documenting near-death experiences and other phenomena, trying to figure out if these offer plausible glimpses of an afterlife or are biologically induced illusions,” Fischer said. “Our approach will be uncompromisingly scientifically rigorous. We’re not going to spend money to study alien-abduction reports.”

The grant will also fund two conferences to discuss the findings. Said UC Riverside Chancellor Timothy P. White, Fischer’s research “takes a universal concern and subjects it to rigorous examination to sift fact from fiction.”

The Immortality Project, as it is called, will solicit research proposals from eminent scientists, philosophers and theologians whose work “will be reviewed by respected leaders in their fields and published in academic and popular journals.”

The research will also delve into cultural aspects of the afterlife. For example, there are reports of millions of Americans seeing a tunnel with a bright light at the end. In Japan, reports often find the individual tending a garden.

The professor added that the academic research could include a range of issues, like “heaven and hell: If we are material beings, how can we exist in heaven, where we would not have physical bodies (or not of the sort we have here)?

“There is a lot of interest in near-death experiences. We can carefully catalog them and look into whether there are patterns. There has already been a lot of work on this. Perhaps some cross-cultural studies would be helpful.

“We’ll also be open to studying the relationship between beliefs in afterlife and behavior–moral behavior and crime rates.”

Sounds like the kind of research topics that many college students have already spent hours pondering. As for the meaning of life? The professor says check back in three years.

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

And on this day in…

79 AD – Mount Vesuvius erupts devastating Pompeii and Herculaneum, killing thousands.
1814 – British torch Washington and the White House, to avenge the burning of Toronto.

1899 – Jorge Luis Borges was born: I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. – Jorge Luis Borges
1981 – John Lennon’s killer sentenced.
1982 – A Wall Street scheme is hatched – Arbitrageur Ivan Boesky and M&A exec Martin Siegel meet at the Harvard Club, in New York – Boesky suggests that if Siegel supply him with early inside information on upcoming mergers, there would be something in it for him.

All across the nation, such a strange vibration,

People in motion

There’s a whole generation, with a new explanation.

-Scott McKenzie, 1939-2012

photos of the day August 24, 2012

A girl look out at the beach as Tropical Storm Isaac approaches in Barahona, Dominican Republic.

Ricardo Arduengo/AP

The sun rises on the Villa Germaine vineyards of Ariccia, on the outskirts of Rome, Italy. Drought and hot temperatures are forcing Italian farmers to start harvest at least a week earlier than usual.

Gregorio Borgia/AP

A long time exposure photo of an early morning thunderstorm with lightning over Zurich, Switzerland, seen from Gockhausen.

Alessandro Della Bella/AP

Market Closes for August 24, 2012:

North American Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	13157.97	-100.51
		+0.77%
S&P 500	1411.13	+9.05
		+0.65%
NASDAQ	3069.79	+16.38
		+0.54%
TSX	2082.23	+19.72
		+0.16%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	9070.76	-107.36
		-1.17%
HANG  SENG	19880.03	-252.21
		-2.25%
SENSEX	17783.21	-67.01
		-0.38%
FTSE 100	5776.60	—-
		—-

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.823	1.822
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.403	2.400
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.6848	1.6782
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.7972	2.7855

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.99235	0.99373
US   $	1.00771	1.00631
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.24242	0.80488
US  $	1.25200	0.79872

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1670.15	1670.40
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	95.85	95.97
BRENT	116.03	116.87

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks climbed, led by financial shares, after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank has the ability to take additional steps to boost the economy.

Royal Bank of Canada rose 1.6 percent. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. advanced 1.2 percent and Suncor Energy Inc. added 1.1 percent as oil increased in New York. Petrominerales Ltd. gained 5 percent for the biggest jump in the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index.

The S&P/TSX climbed 52.32 points, or 0.4 percent, to 12,114.83 at 1:18 p.m. in Toronto. A measure of banks, brokerages and asset managers contributed the most to the advance in the gauge.

“It’s a central-bank driven rally,” said Todd Johnson of BCV Asset Management in Winnipeg, Manitoba, who manages C$380 million ($380 million). He spoke in a phone interview.

“Everybody is looking to global central banks to provide a prop for asset prices, to provide some sort of stimulus. Any positive comment that comes from the Fed will help boost enthusiasm.”

The index fell as much as 0.2 percent earlier after data showed demand for U.S. capital goods dropped in July by the most in eight months. Bernanke spoke in a letter dated Aug. 22 to California Republican Darrell Issa.

Royal Bank of Canada, the nation’s largest lender, advanced 1.6 percent to C$54.16 and Toronto-Dominion Bank gained 0.6 percent to C$80.98.

Energy shares rallied with oil as Tropical Storm Isaac strengthened in the Caribbean Sea on a path that may threaten crude production in the Gulf of Mexico. Canadian Natural Resources advanced 1.2 percent to C$31.21. Suncor Energy added 1.1 percent to C$31.58. Petrominerales Ltd., a Calgary-based oil company that operates in the Andean region, gained 5 percent to C$9.91.

Silvercorp Metals Inc. added 1.6 percent to C$5.91 as the price of the metal climbed for the fifth straight day, up 0.7 percent to $30.74 an ounce.

China Gold International Resources Corp. slumped 1.1 percent to C$3.63 and Gabriel Resources Ltd. sank 5.5 percent to C$2.45.

US

By Inyoung Hwang

Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose, paring the first weekly decline in almost two months for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said he saw “scope for further action,” increasing speculation the central bank will act to boost economic growth.

Nine out of 10 groups in the S&P 500 rose, as consumer discretionary, industrial and technology stocks erased earlier losses. Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. climbed 6 percent for the biggest gain in the benchmark gauge for U.S. stocks as its generic painkiller Lidoderm got approval from the Food and Drug Administration. QEP Resources Inc. jumped 6 percent after agreeing to buy North Dakota oil assets.

The S&P 500 added 0.7 percent to 1,411.13 at 4 p.m. New York time. The gauge fell 0.5 percent for the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 100.51 points, or 0.8 percent, to 13,157.97 today. Volume for exchange-listed stocks in the U.S. was 4.7 billion shares, 24 percent below the three-month average and the third-lowest level of the year.

“It was confirmation of Bernanke’s commitment to potentially do something more if the economy appears it needs it,” John Carey, who helps oversee about $220 billion at Pioneer Investments in Boston, said in a telephone interview.

“That was reassuring to people who might have thought he was stepping back from that.” He said, “It’s summer trading and volume is light so it doesn’t take much to move the market. A little whiff of positive news was enough.”

The S&P 500 had advanced for the past six straight weeks amid optimism that global central banks will take actions to stimulate growth. At the same time, trading volume and volatility have dropped this month as vacationing traders await policy clues from the Fed’s annual summit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and a European Central Bank meeting in September.

“There is scope for further action by the Federal Reserve to ease financial conditions and strengthen the recovery,”

Bernanke said in an Aug. 22 letter to California Republican Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee’s July 31- Aug. 1 meeting showed many members judged that more stimulus “would likely be warranted fairly soon” unless the pace of the recovery picks up. Bernanke will have an opportunity to clarify his views in his Aug. 31 speech at Jackson Hole, where he signaled a second round of bond buying in 2010.

A report today showed demand for U.S. capital goods such as machinery and communications gear dropped in July by the most in eight months, indicating companies are pulling back on investment. Bookings for non-military capital equipment excluding planes slumped 3.4 percent, the Commerce Department report showed.

Global stocks fell earlier as two central bank officials said ECB President Mario Draghi may wait until Germany’s Constitutional Court rules on the legality of Europe’s permanent bailout fund before unveiling full details of his plan to buy government bonds. With the court set to rule on Sept. 12, investors looking for Draghi to announce a definitive program at his Sept. 6 press conference might be disappointed, according to the officials.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a joint press conference with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras that Germany is ready to help the Greek government as it takes the necessary steps to resolve his country’s economic woes. Samaras will go to Paris for a meeting with French President Francois Hollande tomorrow after concluding his visit to Berlin today.

“It’s a resilient market,” Walter Todd, who oversees about $930 million as chief investment officer of Greenwood Capital in Greenwood, South Carolina, said in a telephone interview. “When you think that losses will accelerate, the market rallies back.” He said, “It’s just a very difficult environment to read.”

The S&P 500 has struggled to break out of a narrow trading range as price swings in the index have averaged 0.7 percent a day since Aug. 6, the smallest fluctuation over any comparable periods since January 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The index has hovered above 1,400 since Aug. 7, and failed to stay above a four-year high of 1,419.04 after briefly surpassing it on Aug. 21.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, known as the VIX, fell 4.9 percent to 15.18 today. It has lost 43 percent since June 1 and touched 13.45 on Aug. 17, its lowest level since 2007.

The Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index, a gauge of 30 U.S. stocks tied to economic growth, rose for the first time in five days, adding 0.4 percent. Sears Holding Corp. led gains in the measure, rising 3.8 percent to $56.51. Masco Corp., a home improvement and building products maker, advanced 1.4 percent to $14.13.

Nine out of 10 groups in the S&P 500 gained at least 0.4 percent, with telephone stocks rising the most. Consumer discretionary companies climbed 0.8 percent, after earlier falling as much as 0.2 percent. Industrial stocks added 0.5 percent after losing 0.4 percent. Technology stocks erased a 0.6 percent decline, advancing 0.4 percent.

Watson Pharmaceuticals advanced 6 percent to $83.32 after the Parsippany, New Jersey-based generic-drug maker said in a statement after the market close yesterday that its generic version of Lidoderm received approval from the FDA and it is planning on launching the product in September 2013.

QEP Resources rallied 6 percent to $28.80. The explorer spun off from Questar Corp. in 2010 agreed to buy North Dakota oil assets from companies including Sundance Energy Australia Ltd., expanding its Williston Basin acreage by 30 percent.

Eli Lilly & Co. added 3.4 percent to $43.86 as the company said its experimental Alzheimer’s treatment slowed the decline of cognition in some patients even though it failed to meet the primary goals of two large studies.

Autodesk Inc. plunged 16 percent to $30.13 for the biggest drop in the S&P 500 after the software maker lowered its annual sales forecast and said it plans to cut jobs as it restructures to focus on cloud and mobile computing.

 

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Be magnificent!

Thought is crooked

because it can invent anything

and see things that are not there.

It can perform the most extraordinary tricks,

therefore it cannot be depended upon.

Krishnamurti, 1895-1986

As ever,

Carolann

 

One determined person can make a significant difference; a small group

of determined people can change the course of history.

-Sonia Johnson, 1936-

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Would Google hire you?  How do you test a job applicant’s creativity, problem-solving prowess, and ability to think outside the box?  You might pose some mind-twisting puzzles for him or her to solve.  Here are a few of the ones most easily described and answered, from “Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?” by William Poundstone.

1. THREE WOMEN  are wearing swimsuits.  Two are sad and one is happy.               The happy woman is crying.  The sad women are smiling.  Explain.

1. A MAN PUSHES his car to a hotel and loses his fortune.  What happened?
2. HOW DO YOU PUT  a giraffe in a refrigerator?
3. YOU HAVE 10,000 Apache Web servers and one day to make $1 million.  What would you do?
4. WHAT’S THE MOST BEAUTIFUL equation you’ve ever seen?

Scroll down for the ANSWERS.

And on this day in…

1541 – Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec on his third voyage to North America.

1785 – Naval hero Oliver H. Perry is born.

1912 – Gene Kelly is born.
1914 – The Emperor of Japan declares war on Germany.
1926 – American film star Rudolph Valentino dies, causing world-wide hysteria and a number of suicides.

1927 – Sacco & Vanzetti are executed.
1939 – Joseph Stalin and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sign a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland.
1942 – German forces begin an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad.
1944 – German SS engineers begin placing explosive charges around the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
1950 – Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps are called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.

ANSWERS:

1. They’re at a beauty contest.
2. He’s playing the board game Monopoly.
3. You open the refrigerator door and put him in.
4. Sell the servers for $100 apiece – they’re worth at least that much.
5. E=m(c squared) is simple, beautiful – and lame.  How about: G=8(pi)T, which states Einstein’s general theory of relativity? -from Owen Thomas

photos of the day August 23, 2012

Emanuelle Angeletti (from l. to r.) as Paul McCartney, Stephen Hill as George Harrison, Reuven Gershon as John Lennon, and Gordon Elsmore as Ringo Starr play live in London at the launch of the new West End musical ‘Let it Be’ which celebrates the 50th anniversary of The Beatles. The musical will open to the public on Sept. 24.

Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

A macaque monkey sits on a handrail of a staircase at Batu Caves on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The caves are one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside India.

Vincent Thian/AP

Market Closes for August 23, 2012:

North American Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	13057.46	-115.30
		-0.88%
S&P 500	1402.08	-11.41
		-0.81%
NASDAQ	3053.40	-20.27
		-0.66%
TSX	12062.51	-56.48
		-0.47%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	9178.12	+46.38
		+0.51%
HANG  SENG	20132.24	+244.46
		+1.23%
SENSEX	17850.22	+3.36
		+0.02%
FTSE 100	5776.60	+2.40
		+0.04%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.822	1.851
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.400	2.418
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.6782	1.7002
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.7855	2.8127

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.99373	0.99138
US   $	1.00631	1.00870
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.24845	0.80099
US  $	1.25633	0.79597

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1670.40	1654.30
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	95.97	96.98
BRENT	116.87	117.09

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell as crude declined after comments from European leaders failed to hint at progress on solving the region’s debt crisis, and U.S. jobless claims unexpectedly rose.

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. dropped 2.6 percent. Suncor Energy Inc. fell 1.5 percent. Talison Lithium Ltd. surged 53 percent after it agreed to be acquired by a U.S. company in a C$734 million ($740 million) cash deal.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index fell 56.48 points, or 0.5 percent, to 12,062.51 in Toronto. The benchmark gauge has gained 3.4 percent this month.

“Yesterday people got a bit excited about the potential for QE3,” Marc-Andre Robitaille, a portfolio manager with AGF Investments Inc., said in a phone interview from Montreal, referring to a third round of quantitative easing through asset purchases by the U.S. Federal Reserve. “Today is a bit of back to reality.” Robitaille manages about C$900 million in assets.

The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits climbed last week to a one-month high, a fresh sign of weakness in the U.S. economy that may encourage the U.S. Federal Reserve to introduce another round of monetary stimulus.

Jobless claims rose by 4,000 for a second week to reach 372,000 in the period ended Aug. 18, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 41 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 365,000.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she and French President Francois Hollande will together keep pressure on Greece, at the center of the European sovereign debt crisis, to overhaul its economy.

Merkel, speaking to reporters in Berlin before hosting a working dinner with the French president, said they will discuss “how to receive our colleague,” Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who visits the German capital tomorrow and Paris on Aug. 25.

“It’s important to me that we all stand by our obligations and wait for the troika report and see what the result is,”

Merkel said in a prepared statement, referring to a forthcoming report on Greece’s progress in meeting its bailout terms. “We, and I, will encourage Greece to pursue the path of reform that demands a lot from the people.”

Potash Corp. retreated 2.6 percent to C$41.15, its lowest since June 21. BHP Billiton Ltd. said yesterday it is continuing preparatory work at its Jansen potash project in Saskatchewan. BHP does not yet produce potash, a key fertilizer.

Suncor fell 1.5 percent to C$31.25 and Cenovus Energy Inc. declined 2.4 percent to C$32.37. Crude fell from a three-month high, settling down 99 cents at $96.27 a barrel in New York.

Energy stocks led declines on the S&P/TSX among 10 industries.

Centerra Gold Inc. surged 11 percent to C$8.45 and Barrick Gold Corp. gained 1.5 percent to C$37.87 as gold advanced to its highest level in more than four months. Silver Standard Resources Inc. jumped 7.2 percent to C$14.87 after the metal reached its highest point since May.

Talison Lithium soared 53 percent to C$6.50, its biggest gain ever, after the Australian lithium producer agreed to be acquired by Rockwood Holdings Inc., the world’s largest producer of lithium products. The deal is worth $6.50 a share.

Advantage Oil & Gas jumped 13 percent to C$3.69, its biggest percentage gain since July 2009. The company plans to sell all non-core assets and review its strategic options at year-end, it said in a press release after the market close yesterday. Advantage shares have slumped 13 percent this year.

US

By Inyoung Hwang

Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell, as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index posted its biggest decline in a month, amid investor concern that European leaders aren’t making progress in solving the region’s debt crisis.

Hewlett-Packard Co. dropped 8.2 percent after forecasting full-year earnings that missed analysts’ estimates as demand slumped. Big Lots Inc. tumbled 21 percent after lowering its annual earnings projection. Boeing Co. retreated 3.4 percent after losing 35 orders for 787-9 planes, the biggest Dreamliner cancellation. Alcoa Inc. erased 2.7 percent, pacing declines among raw-material stocks.

The S&P 500 slumped 0.8 percent to 1,402.08 at 4 p.m. in New York. The benchmark index for American equities is heading for its first weekly decline in almost two months, with a four- day drop of 1.1 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 115.3 points, or 0.9 percent, to 13,057.46 today. Volume for exchange-listed stocks in the U.S. was 5.3 billion shares, 16 percent below the three-month average.

“We’re tipping over into a corrective phase in stocks,” Barry James, who helps oversee $3.3 billion as president of James Investment Research in Xenia, Ohio, said in a telephone interview. “Europe is the key driver in the world right now. European leaders aren’t really addressing the root problems.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe is in one of its deepest crises, and while the path to a solution is “arduous,” the euro region will emerge stronger. She hosted French President Francois Hollande today as the leaders of Europe’s two biggest economies seek common ground on Greece and the wider debt crisis. Greece’s prime minister, Antonis Samaras, will follow Hollande to Berlin tomorrow and travel on to Paris on Aug. 25.

Stocks extended declines after the European Union said it is focused on its aid program for Spain’s banks and hasn’t received a request for a full bailout from the euro-area nation.

Earlier, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that allowing Greece more time to meet its debt obligations would not solve the country’s problems and would increase costs for creditors.

“People aren’t willing to invest,” Stephen Hammers, the chief investment officer at Brentwood, Tennessee-based Compass EMP Funds, which manages about $1 billion in assets, said in a telephone interview. “If Europe gets worse, U.S. investors will see that as a warning sign.” Investors also watched for signs of future monetary policy.

The S&P 500 has rallied 9.7 percent since June 1 on speculation global central banks will take action to stimulate growth. U.S. stocks erased losses yesterday as minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee’s last meeting showed many members judged that more stimulus “would likely be warranted fairly soon.”

James Bullard, the Fed Bank of St. Louis President, said today on CNBC the minutes of this month’s meeting were no longer as relevant because the U.S. economy has picked up in the past month. Earlier, Fed Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said in Beijing that easing policies would support economic growth around the world, including in China, broadening his call for more stimulus in the U.S.

Purchases of new U.S. homes rose more than projected in July. Sales climbed 3.6 percent to a 372,000 annual pace, compared with the median estimate of 365,000. A separate report showed the number of applications for unemployment benefits climbed last week to a one-month high, showing little progress in the labor market. Jobless claims rose for a second week to reach 372,000. The median forecast called for 365,000.

A Chinese report today indicated that manufacturing will contract at a faster pace in August, signaling the country’s economy needs more stimulus to secure a rebound in growth. The preliminary reading for a purchasing managers’ index for China was 47.8. If confirmed, it would be the weakest level since November and the 10th month that the reading has stayed below 50, the longest run in the index’s eight-year history.

Hewlett-Packard, the biggest maker of personal computers, dropped 8.2 percent to $17.64 for the biggest decline in a year. Profit excluding some costs will be $4.05 to $4.07 a share in the year that ends in October, Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett-Packard said yesterday in a statement. That’s at the low end of a forecast for $4.05 to $4.10 issued in May and below the average $4.08 analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg.

The company suffered another quarter of slumping demand for personal computers and services aimed at businesses, underscoring the turnaround challenge facing Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman.

Other technology stocks also declined. Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker, slid 2.7 percent to $25.04, while Microsoft Corp., the biggest software maker, slumped 0.9 percent to $30.26.

Big Lots, the Columbus, Ohio-based discount retailer, plunged 21 percent to $30.76 for the biggest drop in the S&P 500. Profit excluding some items will decline to $2.80 to $2.95 a share this year, reduced from a previous projection of $3.25 to $3.40 a share. Analysts anticipated $3.30, the average of 16 estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Boeing slumped 3.4 percent to $70.36, after losing 35 orders for 787-9 planes, the biggest Dreamliner cancellation, as Qantas Airways Ltd. scrapped a contract after delivery delays and losses on international routes. Qantas’s pullback on jets worth about $8.5 billion at current list prices reduced Chicago- based Boeing’s backlog for the 787-9 by about 10 percent.

Raw-material stocks fell 1.7 percent for the biggest drop out of 10 groups in the S&P 500. Alcoa, the largest aluminum producer in the U.S., erased 2.7 percent to $8.63, while DuPont Co., the most valuable U.S. chemicals producer, lost 1.1 percent to $50.24.

Patterson Cos. tumbled 4.9 percent to $34.15. The St. Paul, Minnesota-based maker of medical devices for dental and veterinary clinics reported first-quarter earnings of 45 cents a share, missing the average analyst estimate by 4 cents.

Guess? Inc., an apparel maker that operates 511 stores in the U.S. and Canada, sank 23 percent to $25.95 after cutting its annual profit and revenue forecasts amid a drop in North American store sales. Comparable-store sales, a measure of a retailer’s growth that excludes new stores, fell 8.5 percent in the quarter ended July 28.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

 

The state of mind is a vicious circle.  It creates problems for itself, and then tries to resolve them.

Swami Prajnanpad, 1891-1974

As ever,

Carolann

 

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

-George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

Tangents:

The theft of the most famous painting in the world on August 22nd, 1911, created a sensation.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, is the most famous painting in the world. Quantities of effort and ink have been spent over the years on identifying who she was and deciding what her enigmatic smile signifies, what she says about femininity, if anything, and why she has no eyebrows. Leonardo took the painting with him when he was invited to France by Francis I in 1516. The king bought it and at the French Revolution it was placed in the Louvre. Napoleon took it away to hang in his bedroom, but it was returned to the Louvre afterwards.

The theft of this fabulous object in 1911 created a media sensation. The police were as baffled as everyone else. It was thought that modernist enemies of traditional art must be involved and the avant-garde poet and playwright Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested in September and questioned for a week before being released. Pablo Picasso was the next prominent suspect, but there was no evidence against him either.

Two years went by before the true culprit was discovered, an Italian petty criminal called Vincenzo Perugia who had moved to Paris in 1908 and worked at the Louvre for a time. He went to the gallery in the white smock that all the employees there wore and hid until it closed for the night when he removed the Mona Lisa from its frame. When the gallery reopened he walked unobtrusively out with the painting under his smock, attracting no attention, and took it to his lodgings in Paris.

It was not until November 1913, calling himself Leonardo Vincenzo, that Perugia wrote to an art dealer in Florence named Alfredo Geri offering to bring the painting to Italy for a reward of 500,000 lire. He travelled to Florence by train the following month, taking the Mona Lisa in a trunk, hidden beneath a false bottom. After booking into a hotel, which subsequently shrewdly changed its name to the Hotel La Gioconda, he took the painting to Geri’s gallery. Geri persuaded him to leave it for expert examination and the police arrested Perugia later that day.

Perugia apparently believed, entirely mistakenly, that the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Florence by Napoleon and that he deserved a reward for doing his patriotic duty and returning it to its true home in Italy. That was what he said, at least. Many Italians welcomed the masterpiece home; people flocked to see it for a time at the Uffizi Gallery, some of them weeping with joy, and Perugia served only a brief prison sentence. The great painting was duly returned to the Louvre and has hung there safely and enigmatically ever since.

And also on this day in…

1849 – The Portuguese governor of Macao, China, is assassinated because of his anti-Chinese policies.

1862 – Claude Debussy was born.

1893 – Dorothy Parker is born.

1908 – Henri Cartier-Bresson is born.
1911 – The Mona Lisa, the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, is stolen from the Louvre in Paris, where it had hung for more than 100 years. It is recovered in 1913.

1915 – John Lee Hooker is born.
1922 – Michael Collins, Irish politician, is killed in an ambush.

1942 – Battle of Stalingrad.
1942 – Brazil declares war on the Axis powers. She is the only South American country to send combat troops into Europe.
1945 – Conflict in Vietnam begins when a group of Free French parachute into southern Indochina, in response to a successful coup by communist guerilla Ho Chi Minh.
1983 – Benigno Aquino, the only real opposition on Ferdinand Marcos’ reign as president of the Philippines, is gunned down at Manila Airport.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – George Bernard Shaw

photos of the day August 22, 2012

A butterfly flies over a flower in the village of Trstenica, Serbia.

Darko Vojinovic/AP

Beach visitors of different sorts watch the sunset on Dauphin Island, Ala.

Dave Martin/AP

Market Closes for August 22, 2012:

North American Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	13172.76	-30.82
		-0.23%
S&P 500	1413.52	+0.35
		+0.02%
NASDAQ	3073.67	+6.41
		+0.21%
TSX	12116.90	-0.02
		—-

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	9131.74	-25.18
		-0.27%
HANG  SENG	19887.78	-212.31
		-1.06%
SENSEX	17846.86	-38.40
		-0.21%
FTSE 100	5774.20	-83.32
		-1.42%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.851	1.933
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.418	2.484
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.7002	1.8002
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.8127	2.9005

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.99138	0.98922
US   $	1.00870	1.01090
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.24157	0.80543
US  $	1.25237	0.79843

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1654.30	1637.55
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	96.98	96.40
BRENT	117.09	116.95

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks erased losses as gold rallied after minutes of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s last meeting showed many policy makers backed more monetary easing soon to stimulate the economy.

Barrick Gold Corp., Goldcorp Inc., Eldorado Gold Corp. and Yamana Gold Inc. advanced at least 2.3 percent as the price of the metal jumped to a 16-week high. Rona Inc., Canada’s largest home improvement retailer, plunged 5.1 percent, the biggest percentage drop since May 2011.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index rose 2.07 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 12,118.99 in Toronto, after declining by as much as 0.7 percent earlier in the session. The equity benchmark has gained 3.9 percent this month.

“They hinted way more than expectations, and that is obvious in the reaction; they’re prepared to do QE3,” Bruce Campbell, president of Campbell & Lee Investment Management in Oakville, Ontario, said in a phone interview, referring to a third round of so-called quantitative easing through asset purchases. “Most of it is gold. Money printing, bond printing, however you want to call it, it is a perceived positive for gold because it’s inflationary.”

Many Federal Reserve policy makers said additional stimulus would probably be needed soon unless the economy shows signs of a durable pickup, according to the record of the Federal Open Market Committee’s July 31-Aug. 1 gathering released today in Washington.

Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will have an opportunity to clarify his views in an Aug. 31 speech at a forum for central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Fed officials next meet on Sept. 12 13.

The S&P/TSX Composite Gold Industry subindex rallied, adding 2.7 percent. Barrick Gold advanced 2.4 percent to C$37.34, Goldcorp rose 2.8 percent to C$39.96 and Eldorado Gold surged 4.7 percent to C$13.01. Gold futures for December delivery reached $1,655.90 an ounce on the Comex after the minutes were released at 2 p.m. New York time, the highest for a most-active contract since May 2.

Yamana Gold gained 4 percent to C$16.42 after posting an update on its Corpo Sul project in Brazil and closing its acquisition of Extorre Gold Mines Ltd. Shares of the gold producer have risen 9.3 percent so far this year.

Uranium One Inc. climbed 3.6 percent to C$2.56 and Cameco Corp. rose 0.9 percent to C$22.74 after BHP Billiton Ltd. put on hold approvals on $68 billion worth of projects including its Olympic Dam expansion, which would have created the world’s largest uranium mine.

Rona lost 5.1 percent to C$12.45 after a group of independent Rona store owners sent a letter to Lowe’s opposing the U.S.-based retailer’s C$14.50 a share offer, which Rona rejected. Rona shares have plunged 9.8 percent so far this week, on its way to its worst weekly decline since March 2009.

US

By Inyoung Hwang and Rita Nazareth

Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks and commodities reversed declines, while the dollar slid and Treasuries extended gains, as Federal Reserve meeting minutes showed many policy makers backed more monetary easing soon.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added less than 0.1 percent to 1,413.49 at 4 p.m. in New York after falling as much as 0.5 percent before the minutes. The S&P GSCI Index of commodities rose 0.2 percent, recovering from a 0.6 percent decline, as natural gas and nickel led gains. The Dollar Index, a gauge of the currency against six major peers, lost 0.4 percent to 81.6. Ten-year Treasury note yields slipped 10 basis points to 1.70 percent.

The record of the Federal Open Market Committee’s July 31- Aug. 1 gathering showed that “many members” believed more monetary accommodation would be needed fairly soon unless the pace of the economic recovery picks up. Earlier declines in stocks today were triggered after a slump in Japan’s exports spurred concern about global demand.

“It’s similar to what the Fed governors have been talking about in recent speeches, but it’s positive and that’s why you’ve seen some market reaction,” said Christopher Orndorff, who helps oversee $450 billion as senior portfolio manager at Western Asset Management Co. in Pasadena, California. “It’s still a wait-and-see. The next GDP print will be important, the next employment numbers will be important.”

The S&P 500 has rebounded as much as 12 percent from a five-month low in June and yesterday climbed to its highest level in four years before erasing gains and ending the session lower. The rally has been driven by Europe’s efforts to fight its debt crisis, better-than-forecast economic data and speculation that central banks will provide more stimulus if needed to safeguard the global recovery.

Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will have an opportunity to clarify his views in an Aug. 31 speech at a forum for central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he signaled a second round of bond buying by the Fed in 2010. Fed officials next meet on Sept. 12-13.

“The Fed is ready, willing and able to be responsive to weak economic conditions,” Eric Teal, chief investment officer at First Citizens Bancshares Inc., which manages $4.5 billion in Raleigh, North Carolina, said in a telephone interview.

“There’s a perception that officials want to be ahead of the curve rather than risk a further slowdown as we go through the rest of the year.”

Consumer, commodity and technology shares led gains among the 10 main groups in the S&P 500 today.

PulteGroup Inc. and D.R. Horton Inc. climbed more than 3.9 percent for the biggest gains in the index. Sales of existing homes climbed 2.3 percent to a 4.47 million annual rate in July, rebounding from an eight-month low and adding to signs U.S. housing may pick up in the second half. Toll Brothers Inc. advanced 3.8 percent, climbing to a five-year high, after the luxury home builder’s profit beat estimates.

Discover Financial Services climbed 3.9 percent to a record $38.43 and EBay Inc. rallied 2.5 percent. The two companies announced a payment-processing agreement in which customers of EBay’s PayPal unit can use their accounts at more than 7 million merchant locations that accept Discover.

Dell Inc. sank 5.4 percent after cutting its fiscal 2013 earnings forecast as sales of personal computers weaken, triggering losses in other technology shares. Lenovo Group Ltd., the second-biggest maker of personal computers, sank 2.7 percent in Hong Kong. Samsung Electronics Co., the largest semiconductor manufacturer, lost 1.4 percent in Seoul.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index retreated the most in almost three weeks, losing 1.2 percent. Mining companies led losses, with BHP Billiton Ltd. falling 1.7 percent in London after the world’s largest mining company put $68 billion of projects on hold. Rio Tinto Group, the third-biggest, declined 2.7 percent.

Heineken NV dropped 1.1 percent after the brewer reported first-half earnings before interest and taxes that missed analysts’ estimates as Europeans bought less beer.

Cotton weakened for the first time in four days. Consumption of the fiber in China, the largest user, may shrink 11 percent this year, Zhang Hongxia, chairman of Weiqiao Textile Co., the country’s largest cotton-textile maker, said in an interview. Gold futures for December delivery rose after the release of the minutes, climbing 0.8 percent to $1,656.10 an ounce for a sixth straight gain.

The euro strengthened against 10 of 16 major peers. The shared currency recovered from earlier declines as European finance official Olli Rehn said Europe can overcome its debt crisis with determined work and the region’s central bank has an important role in ensuring stability in the financial system.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel signaled that she’s willing to discuss a Greek request for more time to meet the terms of its international rescue, leaving the door open to potential concessions. Merkel, speaking to reporters in the Moldovan capital Chisinau today, declined to discuss the request publicly before meeting with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in Berlin on Aug. 24, saying she’d “have the opportunity to communicate directly” with him on the matter then. “We won’t find solutions on Friday,” Merkel said.

“The global growth picture is still weak and this is evidenced by sluggish economic and corporate data,” said Allan Yu, who helps manage about $9.4 billion at Manila-based Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. “These meetings in Europe will help set the global tone. If problems come about from these meetings, we will see a further deterioration in the global outlook.”

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index slid 0.5 percent. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of mainland companies listed in Hong Kong retreated 1.3 percent, and Russia’s Micex Index slipped 0.3 percent.

Vietnam’s benchmark stocks index slumped for a second day, losing 1.6 percent. The gauge plunged 4.7 percent yesterday, the most since 2008, as Vietnam’s arrest of Nguyen Duc Kien, the founder of several banks, sparked concern about the vulnerability of the country’s financial system.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

 

No one can understand the sound of a drum,

without understanding both the drum and the drummer.

No one can understand the sound of a conch shell,

without understanding the shell and the one who blows it.

No one can understand the sound of a lute,

without understanding both the lute and the one who plays it.

As there can be no water without the sea, no touch without the skin,

no smell without the nose, no taste without the tongue no sound without the ear,

no thought without the mind, no work without the hands, and no walking without feet,

so there can be nothing without the soul.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

As ever,

Carolann

 

You have to keep digging, keep asking questions, because otherwise

you’ll be seduced or brainwashed into the idea that it’s somehow a

great privilege, an honor, to report the lies they’ve been feeding

you.

–David Halberstam, 1934-2007

 

The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral symbol

of respect for human beings, is the trader.

-Ayn Rand, 1905-1982

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was born on this day in 1872 and lived until his death in 1898.  He was an English artist, born at Brighton, and he took up art as a profession in 1891 until his death.  His work (all in black and white) came continually before the public, arousing a storm of criticism and much hostile feeling.  They felt  that Beardsley had an unswerving tendency towards the fantastic are of the gloomier and “unwholesome’ sort.  To learn more, see www.victorianweb.org.

And also on this day in…

1883 – The trial of Frank James begins in Missouri.
1897 – Olds Motor Works (Oldsmobile) founded.

1904 – Count Basie was born.

1936 – Wilt Chamberlain was born.

1959 – Hawaii becomes the 50th state – President Eisenhower issues orders for the 50-star flag.

1991 – The Hardline Coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ends. The uprising was led by Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin.
1993 – NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft – its fate remains unknown – the project cost $980-million.

photos of the day August 21, 2012

Ecuador’s Tungurahua volcano spews ash to the nearby town of Banos in Tungurahua. The authorities are encouraging residents living near the volcano to evacuate due to increased activity of the volcano, according to local media.

Gary Granja/Reuters

The sun is obscured over the Chips fire near Greenville, California. The fire has forced evacuations and burned over 47,000 acres in Northern California.

Max Whittaker/Reuters

Market Closes for August 21, 2012:

North American Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	13203.58	-68.06
		-0.51%
S&P 500	1413.17	-4.96
		-0.35
NASDAQ	3067.26	-8.95
		-0.29%
TSX	12116.92	+40.89
		+0.34%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	9156.92	-14.24
		-0.16%
HANG  SENG	20100.09	-4.18
		-0.02%
SENSEX	17885.26	+194.18
		+1.10%
FTSE 100	5857.52	+33.15
		+0.57%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.933	1.939
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.484	2.480
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.8002	1.8070
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.9005	2.9229

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98922	0.98853
US   $	1.01090	1.01160
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.23385	0.81047
US  $	1.24730	0.80173

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1637.55	1620.65
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	96.40	95.97
BRENT	116.95	115.83

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rose, sending the benchmark index to the highest level since May, on increasing optimism that European leaders will make progress in addressing the region’s debt crisis and as commodities rallied into a bull market.

Enerplus Corp. jumped 4 percent after selling its stake in a private oil sands company for C$141 million yesterday. CGI Group Inc. climbed 3.8 percent to its highest level in more than 12 years. Eldorado Gold Corp. gained 5.7 percent. Gold and crude prices rallied to three-month highs.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index advanced 40.89 points, or 0.3 percent, to 12,116.92 in Toronto. The index jumped as much as 1 percent earlier in the day. It has gained 1.4 percent in 2012.

“A move is afoot to generate another round of economic stimulation from policy makers once they stabilize the solvency issues in Italy and Spain,” Bob Decker, portfolio manager with Aurion Capital Management, said in a phone interview from Toronto. The firm manages about C$6 billion ($6 billion). “And there has been a natural recovery from the slowdown of the second quarter in terms of sentiment around commodities. Some of the speculators are returning to the market.”

Oil jumped 0.7 percent. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI gauge of 24 raw materials rose 0.9 percent to 675.55, the highest level since May. The gauge has climbed 21 percent from this year’s lowest close of 559 on June 21. A gain of more than 20 percent is the common definition of a bull market.

There is mounting speculation European leaders will make progress on Greece’s debt crisis this week. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the group of euro-area finance ministers, visits Athens tomorrow to listen to a request by Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras for a two-year extension to the country’s fiscal-adjustment program. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meet in Berlin on Aug. 23.

Norbert Barthle, a senior lawmaker with Merkel’s ruling party, said concessions are possible for Greece, including interest and maturity adjustments on loans, as long as the country shows willingness to meet the main targets set out in its bailout program.

Eldorado Gold advanced 5.7 percent to C$12.43. Kirkland Lake Gold Inc. surged 7.1 percent to C$13.40. Gold futures for December delivery increased 1.2 percent to settle at $1,642.90 an ounce in New York.

Barrick Gold Corp. increased 1.3 percent to C$36.48. Goldcorp Inc. rose 2.5 percent to C$38.88.

Silvercorp Metals Inc. jumped 5.9 percent to C$5.76, its biggest percentage gain since May. Silver gained 2.9 percent to $29.51 in New York.

CGI Group, a Montreal-based supplier of technology services to retailers, utilities and banks, added 3.8 percent to C$25.10, the highest price since March 2000. The company recently closed its C$2.7 billion acquisition of Britain’s Logica Plc.

Enerplus surged 4 percent to C$16 after agreeing to sell its stake in Laricina Energy Ltd. Enerplus plans to use the cash to pay down debt. Kristopher Zack, an analyst with Raymond James, upgraded Enerplus to outperform from market perform, with a one-year target price of C$18.

Cenovus Energy Inc. climbed 1.3 percent to C$33.31 after crude futures jumped 0.7 percent to $96.68 a barrel in New York.

Baja Mining Corp. slid 13 percent to 6.5 Canadian cents, its biggest decline in two weeks after the company said it hadn’t received financing committed by its Korean partners by yesterday’s deadline. The miner has struggled to contain expenses to build a copper mine in Mexico and has plunged 92 percent this year.

US

By Inyoung Hwang

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell, after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index failed to remain above a four-year high, as a slump in technology shares overshadowed optimism euro-area leaders will make progress in resolving the region’s crisis.

The S&P 500 lost 0.3 percent to 1,413.26 at 4 p.m. in New York. The index earlier traded above a four-year high of 1,419.04 reached on April 2. Equities erased gains as Apple Inc. tumbled 1.4 percent after setting a record for U.S. market value yesterday, dragging down technology companies as a group.

“Tech’s seeing weakness across the board,” Peter Sorrentino, a money manager at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati who helps oversee $14.7 billion of assets, said today by telephone. “With Apple, you’ve got a case where we have the back-to-school season and what does that look like for their product release.” He said, “Year-to-date, tech’s also up the most, so if you’re going to see profit-taking anywhere, you’d likely see it there.”

The S&P 500 has climbed 12 percent this year, with technology and financial stocks posting the biggest gains.

Investor optimism that global central banks will take actions to stimulate growth has pushed the gauge up since June 1. At the same time, trading volume and volatility have dropped this month as vacationing traders await policy clues from the Federal Reserve’s annual summit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, beginning Aug.30 and a European Central Bank meeting in September.

Economic reports that exceeded economists’ estimates and second-quarter earnings have also boosted stocks. The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index for the U.S., which tracks how much data is beating or missing estimates, rebounded to minus 15.3 after hitting a low of minus 65.3 in July. While earnings growth for S&P 500 companies in the second quarter was the weakest since 2009, about 72 percent posted profits that beat analysts’ projections, the 14th straight quarter earnings topped estimates.

Stocks worldwide rose earlier today on mounting speculation leaders will make progress on Greece’s debt crisis this week.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the group of euro-area finance ministers, visits Athens tomorrow to listen to a request by Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras for a two- year extension to the country’s fiscal-adjustment program.

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meet in Berlin on Aug. 23.

Concessions are possible for Greece so long as Samaras shows a willingness to meet the main targets set out in his country’s bailout program, a senior lawmaker with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party said.

Tomorrow, the Fed will publish minutes of its two-day meeting that ended on Aug. 1. The central bank, which has pledged to keep its benchmark rate near zero through 2014, refrained from adding to the $2.3 trillion in asset purchases it has already made to support the economy. The next Federal Open Market Committee gathering is on Sept. 12-13.

Fed Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart said U.S. policy makers face a risk of easing too much while trying to spur a “disappointing” three-year-old economic recovery.

“There is a risk to monetary policy being employed too aggressively and without effect to address economic problems that can be resolved only by fiscal reform,” Lockhart said today in a speech in Atlanta.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

 

The like and dislike is the result of my culture, my training, my associations,

my inclinations, my acquired and inherited characteristics.

It is from that center that I observe and make my judgments,

and the observer is separate from the thing he observes.

Krishnamurti, 1895-1986

As ever,

Carolann

 

The symbol of all relationships among such men,

the moral symbol of respect for human beings,

is the trader.

-Ayn Rand, 1905-1982

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

We discovered a new (for us) musician on Friday night at Jazz Alley in Seattle.  Her name is Karrin Allyson and even though we had never heard of her, let alone see her live, it turns out she has been nominated Grammy’s three times.  At the end of the show I was standing in line to buy CDs and chatted with the woman in front of me who was visiting from the east coast and told me she had been listening to her for years and how incredible all her CDs are.  Her last one came out in 2011 and is entitled Round Midnight.  I highly recommend it.  She sings Paul Simon’s April Come She Will beautifully and Turn Out the Stars.  Check out www.karrin.com.

And on this day in…

1667 – John Milton publishes Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve.

1921 – Jacqueline Susann, writer, was born.

1940 – Radar is used for the first time, by the British during the Battle of Britain. Also on this day, in a radio broadcast, Winston Churchill makes his famous homage to the Royal Air Force: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
1941 – Adolf Hitler authorizes the development of the V-2 missile – beginning of the age of rockets.

1942 – Plutonium first weighed.

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life:  It Goes On.  –Robert Frost.

photos of the day August 20, 2012

Ecuador’s Tungurahua volcano spews large clouds of gas and ash near Banos. The authorities are encouraging residents living near the volcano to evacuate due to the increased activity of the volcano. The volcano has been in an active state since October 1999.

Carlos Campana/Reuters

A girl sits on a floor painting that creates a three-dimensional optical illusion at a shopping mall in Hong Kong.

Bobby Yip/Reuters

Market Closes for August 20, 2012:

North American Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	13271.64	-3.56
		-0.03%
S&P 500	1418.13	-0.03
		—-
NASDAQ	3076.21	-0.38
		-0.01%
TSX	12076.03	-13.86
		-0.11%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	9171.16	+8.66
		+0.09%
HANG  SENG	20104.27	-11.80
		-0.06%
SENSEX	17691.08	CLOSED FOR RAMZAN ID
FTSE 100	5824.37	-28.05
		-0.48%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.939	1.946
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.480	2.477
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.8070	1.8105
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.9229	2.9309

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98853	0.98925
US   $	1.01160	1.01087
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.22034	0.81944
US  $	1.23450	0.81004

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1620.65	1616.05
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	95.97	96.01
BRENT	115.83	116.62

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Eric Lam

Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks fell for the first time in five days as a rally in oil halted and European policy makers disagreed over plans for government bond purchases.

Teck Resources Ltd. slipped 0.2 percent as copper fell on speculation that higher Chinese home prices will deter officials from adding economic stimulus. Cenovus Energy Inc. dropped 1.1 percent.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index lost 13.86 points, or 0.1 percent, to 12,076.03 at the close. The index briefly erased losses in an afternoon rebound and has gained 3.5 percent this month.

“We’ve had a decent rise and the market is resilient on the downside,” Greg Eckel, a fund manager with Morgan Meighen & Associates, which manages about C$1 billion ($1 billion), said in a phone interview. “A lot of investors are looking for a near-term catalyst to take their cue from as to where we will go from here.”

The benchmark index for Canadian stocks fell after Germany’s Bundesbank stepped up its criticism of the European Central Bank’s plan to embark on potentially “unlimited” government bond purchases, widening a rift on how to deal with the sovereign debt crisis.

“The Bundesbank holds to the opinion that government bond purchases by the Eurosystem are to be seen critically and entail significant stability risks,” the Frankfurt-based central bank said in its monthly report today.

The comments suggest Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann won’t support a measure the ECB is rushing to design to help reduce governments’ borrowing costs and win them time to implement fiscal reforms.

Teck Resources, Canada’s largest diversified mining company, slumped 0.2 percent to C$29.33 after copper prices fell the most in two weeks on bets that higher Chinese home prices will deter officials from adding stimulus to boost economic growth. Copper futures for December delivery slid 1.4 percent to settle at $3.379 a pound on the Comex in New York, the biggest drop since since Aug. 2.

Cenovus retreated 1.1 percent to C$32.87 after oil futures fell for the first time in five days. Crude fell 4 cents to settle at $95.97 a barrel in New York.

Harry Winston Diamond Corp. tumbled 5.1 percent to C$12.72 after posting an update on its Diavik diamond mine, located about 300 kilometers north of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. The new figures suggest the mine’s valuation may be reduced by as much as 25 percent from previous estimates of $1.2 billion, said Edward Sterck, analyst with BMO Capital Markets in London.

“A reduction to cash flows and valuation would be negative,” he said in a note to clients. Harry Winston owns a 40 percent stake in the mine, but does not operate it.

Rona Inc. lost 2.2 percent to C$13.50 after potential suitor Lowe’s Cos. said it wasn’t planning an imminent bid for Canada’s largest home improvement retailer.

Precious-metals producers in the S&P/TSX gained as gold and silver rose in New York. Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest gold-mining company, added 1.2 percent to C$36.01. Silver Standard Resources Inc. surged 5.5 percent to C$13.14 for the biggest percentage gain in the stock gauge. Silvercorp Metals added 3.2 percent to C$5.44.

Gold gained 0.2 percent to settle at $1,623 an ounce in New York. Silver jumped 2.1 percent to $28.678 an ounce, the biggest gain since Aug. 3.

US

By Inyoung Hwang

Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) — Most U.S. stocks fell, after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose to its highest level since April, as investor concern about Europe’s debt crisis overshadowed a rally in technology and financial companies.

Best Buy Co. lost 10 percent after saying its founder declined an offer from the board to conduct due diligence and go to shareholders with his buyout offer. Apple Inc. jumped 2.6 percent to its highest price ever, pacing a technology rally.

Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. added at least 1.1 percent as financial companies recovered from early losses.

The S&P 500 was almost unchanged at 1,418.13 at 4 p.m. in New York, within a point of a four-year high set in April. The gauge fell 0.4 percent earlier as Germany’s Bundesbank stepped up its criticism of the European Central Bank’s bond-buying program. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 3.56 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 13,271.64. Seven stocks fell for every five declining on U.S. exchanges, with volume at 4.9 billion shares, 23 percent below the three-month average.

“We’re at a pretty formidable technical resistance here,” Michael Strauss, who helps oversee about $26 billion of assets as the chief investment strategist at Commonfund in Wilton, Connecticut, said in a telephone interview. “The Bundesbank does have a hard problem with this,” he said, referring to the ECB’s bond-buying program. “Germany is being put in the position as being the lender of last resort in Europe.”

The S&P 500 last week capped its longest stretch of weekly gains since January 2011 as economic reports beat forecasts and Germany backed the ECB’s bond-buying plan. Trading volume and volatility have dropped this month as vacationing traders await policy clues from the Federal Reserve’s summit at the end of the month and an ECB meeting in September.

Government bond purchases “entail significant stability risks,” the Bundesbank said in its monthly report today. The ECB’s governing council may decide at its next gathering to set yield limits on each country’s debt, Spiegel magazine reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information. The ECB said the council has not discussed any plan to target the bond yields and that “it is absolutely misleading to report on decisions,” a bank spokesman said in an e-mailed statement.

Reports in the U.S. this week will show that combined purchases of new and existing houses increased to a 4.89 million annual rate in July from a 4.72 million pace in June, according to the median forecasts in surveys of economists before releases from the National Association of Realtors on Aug. 22 and the Commerce Department the next day. Bookings for long-lasting goods may have climbed the most this year, a release from the Commerce Department will show Aug. 24, according to the median estimate.

The Fed will on Aug. 22 release minutes from the Aug. 1 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, when policy makers declined to initiate a third round of monetary stimulus, a policy known as quantitative easing. The S&P 500 has rallied 11 percent since June 1 on speculation the central bank may signal more easing at the Kansas City Fed’s annual conference on Aug. 30 to Sept. 1 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The 13 percent rally in the S&P 500 this year through Aug.17 has lifted the gauge to its highest level ever compared with strategists’ forecasts, a sign that the best may be over for U.S. equities in 2012.

Shares have climbed 2.1 percent above the average projection of 1,389 from 13 firms from Morgan Stanley to JPMorgan tracked by Bloomberg. That’s the biggest premium on record for this time of year, according to data going back to 1999. Estimates by strategists in August have come true for the last three years, with the S&P 500 rising 11 percent on average through December, the data show.

“The core fundamentals are not really a reason to be long stocks,” said Barry Knapp, the New York-based head of U.S. equity strategy at Barclays Plc, in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop” with Deirdre Bolton. “Core fundamentals, earnings and revenue growth have deteriorated to a great extent.”

Phone and consumer discretionary companies posted the biggest declines out of 10 groups in the S&P 500, falling more than 0.5 percent.

Best Buy erased 10 percent for the biggest decline in the S&P 500 to $18.16. The retailer’s board proposed that founder Richard Schulze, beginning in January, be allowed to take his buyout offer to shareholders, should the board decide to reject any definitive proposal to acquire shares. Schulze didn’t accept the proposal, according to Best Buy.

Lowe’s Cos. tumbled 5.8 percent to $26.26. The second- largest U.S. home-improvement retailer reported second-quarter earnings that trailed analysts’ estimates as comparable-store sales fell. Adjusted earnings per share were 65 cents. Analysts had projected 70 cents. The retailer cut its full-year profit forecast to $1.64 a share from a projection of $1.83 a share in May.

Waste Management Inc. decreased 3 percent to $34.60 after Barron’s reported the trash handler may be poised to fall as much as 15 percent because of operating performance. Garbage volume has been little changed to down for years because of conservation, recycling and slow industrial growth, Barron’s said.

Corinthian Colleges Inc. slipped 1.2 percent to $2.42. The for-profit college operator forecast revenue in the first quarter will be no more than $405 million, missing the average analyst estimate of $406.4 million.

Financial stocks rose 0.3 percent after dropping as much as 0.3 percent earlier. Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. bank by assets, climbed 1.9 percent to $8.15. JPMorgan, the biggest bank in the nation by assets, added 1.1 percent to $37.37.

Technology stocks increased 0.3 percent. Hewlett-Packard Co. soared 2.9 percent to $20.09 for the biggest gain in the Dow.

Apple, the world’s most valuable company, advanced 2.6 percent to $665.15. The company’s market value reached $623.52 billion, higher than Microsoft Corp.’s record of $620.6 billion, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P, in a note today. The iPhone and iPad maker surpassed $600 billion in market value last week on speculation that production has started on a smaller version of the iPad tablet as well as a new television product.

Facebook Inc., the operator of the world’s largest social- networking service, jumped 5 percent to $20.01 after falling last week to a record low that was close to half the stock’s initial public offering price of $38 in May.

Health-care stocks added 0.3 percent as a group. Coventry Health Care Inc. surged 20 percent to $42.04. Aetna Inc., a health insurer, will pay $42.08 a share for the medical-care provider in cash and stock, the companies said in a statement today. Aetna’s shares climbed 5.6 percent to $40.18.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

Life is very real – life is not an abstraction –

our problems begin when we encounter it only through images

Krishnamurti, 1895-1986

As ever,

Carolann

 

Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else.

-Heywood Brown, 1888-1939

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Hello all, I’m filling in for Carolann again today so I thought I would share something interesting I came across on the internet recently. Visually striking and more than a little bit haunting is the abandoned theme park know as Wonderland. Built in the Chenzhuang Village of China, about 20 miles northwest of central Beijing, Wonderland was to be the largest amusement park in all of Asia. However, after some disagreements with the local government in 1998, construction was stopped. Developers tried restart the project in 2008, but were unable to resume construction. The land and half built amusement park now function as one of the most bizarre looking corn fields in the world. Reuters photographer David Gray visited the site in early December of last year and published an absolutely beautiful photoset that you can view here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/12/chinas-abandoned-wonderland/100207/

 

photos of the day August 17, 2012

An industrial climber ropes down the cupola of Berlin Cathedral with the television tower in the background during inspection works in Berlin, Germany. The new cross atop Berlin Cathedral was installed four years ago and undergoes regular inspections every two years.- Gero Breloer/AP

Pakistani men (c.) count money they collected for worshipers to be delivered to poor families, on the last Friday of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, in a mosque in Gujranwala, Pakistan.

– Aftab Rizvi/AP

Market Closes for August 17, 2012:

North American Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	13275.20	+25.09
		+0.19%
S&P 500	1418.16	+2.65
		+0.19%
NASDAQ	3076.59	+14.20
		+0.46%
TSX	12089.89	+57.31
		+0.48%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	9162.50	+69.74
		+0.77%
HANG  SENG	20116.07	+153.12
		+0.77%
SENSEX	17691.08	+33.87
		+0.19%
FTSE 100	5852.42	+17.91
		+0.31%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.946	1.963
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.477	2.489
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.8105	1.8346
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.9309	2.9527

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	0.98925	1.01356
US   $	1.01087	0.98663
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.22009	0.81961
US  $	1.23335	0.81080

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1616.05	1614.95
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	96.01	95.60
BRENT	116.62	117.53

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Katia Dmitrieva

Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rose for a fourth day, the longest streak in a month, as an index of U.S. leading economic indicators rose more than forecast and optimism grew Europe’s policy makers will take steps to ease the debt crisis.

Royal Bank of Canada, the largest lender in the country, and Toronto-Dominion Bank advanced at least 0.9 percent.

Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. advanced 1.9 percent. Banks and energy companies contributed the most to gains among 10 industries on the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index.

The S&P/TSX gained 57.31 points, or 0.5 percent, to 12,089.89. The benchmark index rose 1.7 percent this week, erasing losses for the year and leaving it up 1.1 percent in 2012.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel affirmed support for the euro during a press conference in Ottawa yesterday. She is considering easing Greece’s bailout terms, fanning tensions with members of her coalition who oppose giving the Greek government any more concessions, two German lawmakers said.

“The comments out of Merkel are reinforcing that belief that if you’ve missed this bounce, you’ve gotta start buying to get back into the market to catch up,” Greg Taylor, who helps manage C$5.5 billion at Toronto-based Aurion Capital Management Ltd., said in a phone interview.

Merkel’s government is torn between showing some leniency toward Greece as it struggles to meet the terms of its rescues and insisting that Prime Minister Antonis Samaras deliver on his promises, Klaus-Peter Willsch and Frank Schaeffler, both of whom have voted against Merkel’s euro crisis policies in parliament, said in separate telephone interviews.

In the U.S., the Conference Board’s gauge of the economic outlook for the next three to six months increased 0.4 percent after a revised 0.4 percent drop in June, the New York-based group said today. Economists projected the gauge would rise by 0.2 percent, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.

Royal Bank added 1 percent to C$53.99. Toronto-Dominion advanced 0.9 percent to C$81.24. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was up 0.6 percent to C$75.77.

Oil advanced for a fourth day in New York, reversing declines in earlier trading. Canadian Oil Sands advanced 1.9 percent to C$21.94. Penn West Petroleum Ltd. added 2.1 percent to C$14.45.

Gold swung between gains and losses in New York. Goldcorp Inc. added 0.4 percent to C$38.08. Kinross Gold Corp., the fourth largest gold miner in Canada, slipped 0.2 percent to C$8.23. Eldorado Gold corp. declined 0.4 percent to C$11.71.

Lake Shore Gold Corp. tumbled 16.2 percent to 93 Canadian cents.

US

By Lu Wang and Daniel Kruger

Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks rose, sending benchmark indexes to near the highest levels in more than four years, amid better-than-forecast economic data. Treasuries halted a four-day drop, pulling 10-year yields down from a three-month high.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed 0.2 percent to 1,418.16, less than one point below its highest closing level since May 2008, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly topped its best close since December 2007. Rates on 10-year notes lost two basis points to 1.81 percent after yesterday climbing as high as 1.86 percent, matching their 200-day moving average. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index rose to a 13-month high and Spain’s bonds rallied as concern over the debt crisis eased.

Better-than-forecast data on consumer confidence and leading economic indicators weren’t enough to send the S&P 500 above 1,419.04, its four-year high reached in April. Treasuries still fell for a fourth week, the longest streak since 2010, as improving data reduced demand for the safety of U.S. debt. In Europe, speculation grew that policy makers will take steps to protect the region’s banks, helping the Stoxx 600 extend its rebound from a June low to 17 percent.

“Today’s data is just a couple more pieces of the puzzle that show improvement, but not all that great,” Terry L. Morris, who helps oversee about $2.5 billion at Wyomissing, Pennsylvania-based National Penn Investors Trust Co., said in a phone interview. “The general attitude is optimistic, maybe more optimism than the market should have.”

Trading of S&P 500 companies was about 13 percent below the 30-day average and the index swung no more than 0.29 percent from its high to its low of the session, the smallest fluctuation since 2006.

The Dow climbed 25.09 points, or 0.2 percent, to 13,275.20 and rose as high as 13,281.32.

Gap Inc. and J.M. Smucker Co. jumped at least 4.8 percent after earnings topped analyst estimates. Apple Inc. rose to a record $648.11 and exceeded $600 billion in market value for the first time after Jefferies & Co. said the company had started production of the iPad mini, a smaller version of its popular tablet.

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. slumped 14 percent after predicting profit that fell short of forecasts.

As the S&P 500 approached its highest level since 2008, the cost of using options to protect against declines in the benchmark index slid to a five-year low. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, the benchmark for U.S. options known as the VIX, sank 5.9 percent to 13.45 today, its lowest level since June 2007.

Today’s reports on U.S. consumer confidence and leading economic indicators added to optimism about the economy after data this week that showed retail sales jumped more than expected and applications for building permits rose to the highest since August 2008.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary August index of consumer sentiment increased to 73.6, the highest level since May, from 72.3 the prior month. The gauge was projected to be little changed at 72.2, according to the median forecast of 72 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

The Conference Board’s gauge of the outlook for the next three to six months increased 0.4 percent after a revised 0.4 percent drop in June, the New York-based group said today.

Economists projected the gauge would rise by 0.2 percent, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.

Thirty-year yields today slipped two basis points to 2.93 percent, while rates on two-year debt lost less than one basis point to 0.29 percent.

The Stoxx 600 climbed 1.1 percent over five days to cap an 11th straight weekly gain, its longest rally since January 2006.

Bankinter SA and Bankia SA rallied more than 2 percent on speculation the European Union will disburse the first installment of a 100 billion-euro ($124 billion) bailout facility to Spain’s lenders. Swiss Life Holding AG jumped 3.1 percent as the biggest Swiss life insurer’s first-half profit exceeded analysts’ estimates

Spanish bonds outperformed all their euro-area peers today, with the nation’s 10-year yield falling eight basis points to 6.44 percent. The rate lost 46 basis points this week, the biggest decline since the five days through July 27. Spain’s two-year yield dropped 22 basis points to 3.77 percent today.

The two-year yield may fall to as low as 2 percent should the ECB buy debt through its bond-purchase program, said Steven Major, head of fixed-income research at HSBC Holdings Plc in London.

“It’s all about getting those front-end yields stapled to the floor,” Major said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “The Pulse” with Maryam Nemazee.

German 10-year yields slipped three basis points to 1.50 percent.

Australia’s dollar declined against 15 of its 16 major peers, weakening 0.9 percent versus the U.S. currency, after the nation’s Treasury said the central bank would be able to ease monetary policy if the currency’s gains are hurting the economy.

The S&P GSCI gauge of 24 commodities was little changed after a three-day rally, with lead, cocoa and wheat leading gains and gasoline, Brent crude and heating oil falling the most.

Oil for September delivery rose 41 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $96.01 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest settlement since May 11, amid rising tension in the Middle East. The price is up 9 percent in August and 13 percent in the third quarter.

Platinum for October delivery jumped as much as 2.8 percent to $1,475.30 an ounce, the highest since July 6, after 34 people were killed at Lonmin Plc’s Marikana platinum mine in South Africa, according to the country’s police commissioner.

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index fell 0.4 percent, capping its first weekly drop in five weeks. South Korea’s Kospi Index lost 0.6 percent, with shares in South Africa, Poland and Taiwan declining. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of mainland companies added 0.9 percent, and Turkey’s benchmark gauge climbed 1.3 percent. India’s Sensex rose 0.2 percent, while Russia Micex Index slipped 0.5 percent.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Regards,

Ellora Howie

Assistant to Carolann Steinhoff

 

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8X 3Y7

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Interesting news item today:

Scientists have found a galaxy that gives birth to more stars in a day than ours does in a year.  Astronomers used NASA’s Chandra X-Ray telescope to spot this distant gigantic galaxy creating about 740 new stars a year.  By comparison, our Milky Way  galaxy spawns just about one new star each year. The galaxy is about 5.7 billion light years away in the center of a recently discovered cluster of galaxies.

And also on this day in…

1777 – France declares a state of bankruptcy.

1812 – American General Hull surrenders Detroit without resistance to smaller British force under General Isaac Brock.

1896 – Gold discovered in the Klondike of Canada’s Yukon Territory, setting off the Gold Rush.

1948 – Babe Ruth died.

1958 – Madonna was born.
1965 – The Watts Riot ends in South Central Los Angeles after six days.

1977 – Elvis Presley died.

I don’t know anything about music.  In my line you don’t have to. –Elvis Presley.

photos of the day August 16, 2012

Horses continue running after losing their riders during the Madonna dell’Assunta (Virgin of the Assumption) ancient Palio, the famous break-neck bareback horse race run in the main square in Siena, Italy.

Paolo Lazzeroni/AP

People browse books at a giant outdoor library, an installation by Italian artist Massimo Bartolini, in the vineyard of the Saint-Peters Abbey in Ghent, Belgium.

Virginia Mayo/AP

Data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows two clusters full of massive stars that may be in the early stages of merging. The 30 Doradus Nebula is 170,000 light-years from Earth.

NASA/Reuters

Market Closes for August 16, 2012:

North American Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	13250.11	+85.33
		+0.65%
S&P 500	1415.51	+9.98
		+0.71%
NASDAQ	3062.39	+31.46
		+1.04%
TSX	12032.58	+127.14
		+1.07%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	9092.76	+167.72
		+1.88%
HANG  SENG	19962.95	-89.34
		-0.45%
SENSEX	17600.56	-1.22
		-0.01%
FTSE 100	5834.51	+1.47
		+0.03%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.963	1.942
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.489	2.454
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.8346	1.8051
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.9527	2.9100

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	1.01356	1.01086
US   $	0.98663	0.98926
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.21922	0.82019
US  $	1.23575	0.80922

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1614.95	1604.00
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	95.60	94.33
BRENT	117.53	117.23

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Katia Dmitrieva

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks rose, sending the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index to the highest level since May, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel affirmed support for the euro during a press conference in Ottawa and U.S. building permits jumped to a four-year high.

Barrick Gold Corp. climbed 3.9 percent after the company said it is in preliminary talks to sell its Africa unit to China National Gold Group Corp. Cameco Corp. added 5.2 percent as oil advanced in New York. Alderon Iron Ore Corp. rallied 6.5 percent. Energy and raw-materials companies contributed the most to gains in the S&P/TSX.

The Canadian stocks gauge rose 127.14 points, or 1.1 percent, to 12,032.58. The benchmark index has climbed 1.6 percent over the last three sessions, erasing its 2012 losses.

“Merkel came out and reaffirmed her support for the euro,” Jeff Young, who helps manage C$900 million as chief investment officer at NexGen Financial Corp. in Toronto, said in a phone interview. “People are thinking that to support the euro, that’s going to necessitate bringing down the borrowing cost for euro members, which is going to necessitate help from the ECB, which means we’re going to get quantitative easing out of the ECB. That’s the chain of thought.”

Merkel backed the European Central Bank’s insistence on austerity conditions for helping reduce borrowing costs in indebted countries, saying Germany is “in line” with the ECB’s approach to defending the euro. She said that euro-area policy makers “feel committed to do everything we can to maintain the common currency.” Merkel also hailed Canada’s budget and debt discipline as a model for the 17-nation euro area.

Oil surged on the Comex in New York, climbing above $95 a barrel for the first time in three months on signals of future U.S. economic growth and concern that Israel will strike Iran and disrupt oil supplies.

U.S. building permits reached a four-year high, increasing to an 812,000 annual pace in July. Michael Oren, Israel’s U.S. ambassador, said yesterday that Israel would strike Iran if only to delay that country’s ability to produce nuclear weapons for a few years.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. rose 2.3 percent to C$31.53. Cameco added 5.2 percent to C$22.

Goldcorp Inc. increased 4.7 percent to C$37.93 as the metal gained 0.8 percent on the Comex in New York. Kinross Gold Corp. rose 2.6 percent to C$8.25. Alderon Iron climbed 6.5 percent to C$2.45.

Barrick Gold added 3.9 percent to C$35.60. China, with $3.2 trillion of foreign-exchange reserves, has urged its companies to buy assets overseas, securing energy and commodity resources to feed industries from power generation to construction. A deal for Barrick’s 73.9 percent stake in African Barrick Gold Plc is not certain, the company said.

US

By Lu Wang

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks advanced, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to the highest level since April, as building permits jumped in July to a four-year peak and Cisco Systems Inc.’s earnings beat estimates.

Cisco rallied 9.6 percent while Sears Holdings Corp. climbed 6.5 percent as its loss narrowed. An S&P index of homebuilders soared 4.4 percent to the highest level since 2008.

Facebook Inc. dropped 6.3 percent to the lowest price since its initial public offering as the end of a lockup period freed 271.1 million shares for trading. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. fell 3.1 percent after its forecast trailed analyst estimates.

The S&P 500 rose 0.7 percent to 1,415.51 at 4 p.m. in New York. The benchmark index is less than four points from a four- year peak of 1,419.04 set on April 2. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 85.33 points, or 0.7 percent, to 13,250.11. The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 1 percent to 3,062.39. Volume for exchange-listed stocks in the U.S. was 5.9 billion shares, 9 percent below the three-month average.

“We’re in a situation where the economy is growing, jobs are being created, and the consumer seems to be feeling better about spending,” Jason Benowitz, who helps manage $5 billion at Roosevelt Investment Group Inc. in New York, said in a phone interview. “The fact permitting is improving in the housing market suggests the future is going to be there. On the other hand, you have to counterweight the less likely chance of further monetary easing.”

The S&P 500 Total Return index, which assumes dividends are reinvested back into the gauge’s 500 stocks, climbed to a record today even as the regular S&P 500 remained almost 10 percent below its peak in 2007.

Stocks broke out of a narrow trading range today. The S&P 500 has hovered around 1,400 for the past seven sessions, with intraday price movement averaging 0.6 percent, the smallest fluctuation over a comparable period since January 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Dow’s price swings were less than 1 percent from Aug. 6 through yesterday, the narrowest since at least 2000, the data show.

Trading volume and volatility have dropped as vacationing traders awaited policy clues from the Federal Reserve’s summit at the end of the month and a European Central Bank meeting in September. The index has rallied 11 percent from a five-month low on June 1 amid speculation global central banks will introduce further stimulus measures.

Equities extended gains after a person familiar with the matter said Spain is about to get an emergency disbursement from a 100 billion-euro ($123 billion) bailout package. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the ECB’s insistence on conditionality in return for help to lower borrowing costs in indebted countries matches her country’s priorities to end the crisis in the euro region.

“Everybody is seeing an emerging good story coming out of Europe,” Greg Peterson, director of investment research at Ballentine Partners LLC in Waltham, Massachusetts, which has about $4 billion in assets, said in a phone interview.

“American corporations are in great shape. Their earnings are solid and their cash at hand is excellent. I expect the solid returns to hold for the rest of the year, if not build on it.”

Building permits, a proxy for future construction, rose to an 812,000 pace, the most since August 2008, the Commerce Department said today. A Labor Department report showed jobless claims climbed by 2,000 to 366,000 in the week ended Aug. 11 while the Fed Bank of Philadelphia’s general economic index showed manufacturing in the Philadelphia region contracted in August for a fourth consecutive month.

“Today’s data is by and large neutral,” Wasif Latif, vice president of equity investments at USAA Investments in San Antonio, which oversees about $50 billion, said in a phone interview. “But when you aggregate the data that have been coming in during the summer, there does seem to be some softening going on in the economic activity, other than the bottoming that we’re witnessing in housing. That would indicate that the Fed continues to be ready to do something.”

Technology, commodity and industrial companies rose the most among 10 S&P 500 industry groups, jumping at least 0.9 percent. The Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index climbed 1.6 percent to the highest level since May as investors snapped up shares most tied to economic swings.

The S&P gauge of computer and software makers advanced 1.5 percent. Microsoft Corp. gained 1.9 percent to $30.78 while International Business Machines Corp. added 1.2 percent to $200.84.

Cisco surged 9.6 percent, the most in a year, to $19.02. The biggest maker of computer-networking equipment reported profit and sales that topped analysts’ estimates as job cuts kept costs in check and price reductions attracted customers.

Sears climbed 6.5 percent to $60.29. The retailer controlled by hedge fund manager Edward Lampert reported a smaller second-quarter loss, helped by reduced inventory costs.

All 11 members of the S&P Supercomposite Homebuilding Index advanced. PulteGroup Inc. jumped 6.4 percent to $13.60, KB Home added 5.5 percent to $10.89 and Toll Brothers Inc. increased 5.6 percent to $32.16.

Home Depot Inc., the largest U.S. home-improvement retailer, rose 2.4 percent to $56.31, the highest level since 2000. Smaller rival Lowe’s Cos. gained 2.3 percent to $27.45.

GameStop Corp. climbed 5.5 percent to $17.98 for the biggest increase since April 2011. The largest video-game retailer boosted its dividend by 67 percent and said it will buy back stock after reporting a drop in second-quarter earnings.

Facebook sank 6.3 percent to $19.87, the lowest close ever. The world’s largest social network freed up 271.1 million of its shares today, boosting by 60 percent the number that could be traded and adding to concerns that have weighed on the stock since the company’s May IPO.

Early Facebook investors such as DST Global Ltd., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Elevation Partners and Accel Partners get a green light today to start selling part of their holdings, Menlo Park, California-based Facebook has said in filings.

Wal-Mart fell 3.1 percent to $72.15. The world’s largest retailer said profit this year may be $4.83 to $4.93 a share amid slowing sales growth in the U.S. The average estimate of analysts was for profit of $4.93.

Agilent Technologies Inc. tumbled 8.2 percent to $37.15. The maker of scientific-testing equipment cut its full-year forecasts, citing slowing economic growth and delays in order deliveries from customers. Profit for the current fiscal year will be no more than $3.08 a share, Agilent said. Analysts, on average, estimated $3.23.

Perrigo Co. slipped 6.6 percent to $108.93. The generic over-the-counter drugmaker reported fourth-quarter sales of $831.8 million, trailing the average analyst estimate of $854 million in a Bloomberg survey.

Idenix Pharmaceuticals Inc. plunged 30 percent, the most in two years, to $5.84. A trial of the company’s hepatitis C drug was placed on hold because of heart failure concerns raised in a competitor’s study of a similar medicine, Idenix said.

A possible stalemate around U.S. fiscal tightening and a slowing economy will pull stocks down this year, even as equities may gain in the longer term, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s chief U.S. equity strategist said.

“The uncertainty that is very significant relating to the fiscal cliff and the budget issues and the tax policy for next year are unlikely to get resolved in the very near term,” New York-based David Kostin said in a radio interview today on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene. Still, “if you are looking where you are buying the market now, on a long term basis, it is attractive.”

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

 

It is necessary that this be the aim of our entire life.

In all of our thoughts and actions,

we must be conscious of the infinite.

Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1901

As ever,

Carolann

 

One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels.

The thing to be supplied is light, not heat.

-Woodrow Wilson, 1856-1924

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

August 15^th, 1969: Over 400,000 young people attend a weekend of music at Woodstock, New York.

August 15, 1969 – The Woodstock Music Festival Poster:

Aerial shot of the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival

And also on  this day in…

1769 – Napoleon Bonaparte was born.

1912 – Julia Child was born.

1914 – The Panama Canal opens to traffic.

1930 – President Hoover looks to combat drought and economic depression.
1947 – Britain grants independence to India and Pakistan.
1945 – Gasoline and fuel oil rationing ends in the U.S.

photo of the day August 15, 2012

A couple talk as the sun sets at Enoshima beach in Fujisawa, near Tokyo.

Shizuo Kambayashi/AP

Market Closes for August 15, 2012:

North American Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	13164.71	-7.43
		-0.06%
S&P 500	1405.53	+1.60
		+0.11%
NASDAQ	3030.93	+13.95
		+0.46%
TSX	77909.88	+56.27
		+0.47%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	8925.04	-4.84
		-0.05%
HANG  SENG	20052.29	-239.39
		-1.18%
SENSEX	17728.20	CLOSED FOR INDEPENDENCE DAY
FTSE 100	5833.04	-31.74
		-0.54%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.942	1.857
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.454	2.382
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.8051	1.7309
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.9100	2.8307

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	1.01086	1.00772
US   $	0.98926	0.99234
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.21569	0.82258
US  $	1.22889	0.81374

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1604.00	1599.65
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	94.33	93.43
BRENT	117.23	114.93

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Katia Dmitrieva

Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks advanced after U.S. industrial production rose in July as investors awaited more signs of whether the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank would act to spur economic growth.

Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank advanced at least 0.9 percent. Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., the world’s largest fertilizer producer, climbed 1 percent. Bank shares contributed most to gains on the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index. Energy shares reversed declines as oil rose.

The S&P/TSX gained 52.24 points, or 0.4 percent, to 11,905.85 at 3:21 p.m. in Toronto, after falling as much as 0.1 percent earlier.

“People are positioning themselves for a potential solution out of Europe by buying the financial stocks,” Brian Huen, who helps manage C$55 million at Toronto-based Red Sky Capital Management Ltd., said in phone interview. “I think the market is in an up-trend because people want to own this market, especially into the late August, early September events.”

Industrial production in the U.S. rose in July, led by a pick-up in motor vehicle output and a rebound in utility use during the hottest month on record. In a separate report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, manufacturing in the New York area contracted in August for the first time in 10 months.

The Federal Open Market Committee on Aug. 1 reiterated its pledge to ease policy further if necessary, and ECB President Mario Draghi promised last month that policy makers will do whatever is needed to preserve the euro. Investors are awaiting Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s speech Aug. 31 at the Kansas City conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and an ECB meeting next month for more direction.

Royal Bank, the country’s largest lender, gained 1 percent to C$52.52. Toronto-Dominion Bank advanced 0.9 percent to C$80.06. Bank of Montreal added 0.4 percent to C$57.35.

Gold companies advanced as the metal rose 0.3 percent on the Comex in New York. Osisko Mining Corp., which holds interest in the Canadian Malartic gold deposit in Quebec, added 2.5 percent to C$9.28. Barrick Gold Corp., the largest producer of the metal, rose 1 percent to C$34.23. New Gold Inc. advanced 2.6 percent to C$10.21.

Great Basin Gold Ltd., a producer of the metal in South Africa and Nevada, plunged 45 percent to 24 cents, the most in almost 23 years. It warned investors it’s running out of cash after lower-than-expected production at the Burnstone mine. It will seek to raise at least C$60 million ($61 million) through a combination of asset sales or new shares. Chief Executive Officer Ferdi Dippenaar resigned.

Potash Corp. increased 1 percent to C$43.34. Agrium Inc., the largest farm retailer in the U.S., added 1.7 percent to C$97.60. The company is meeting with Jana Partners LLC and other shareholders today after rejecting the hedge fund’s proposal for Agrium to spin off its retail unit, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Oil reversed declines as the commodity gained 0.8 percent on the Comex in New York, having fallen as much as 0.8 percent in earlier trading. Cenovus Energy Inc. added 1 percent to C$32.64. Cameco Corp. advanced 2.4 percent to C$20.87.

US

By Lu Wang

Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) — Most U.S. stocks rose, after a two- day decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as investors weighed manufacturing data for clues on whether the Federal Reserve will move to stimulate the economy.

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. and JDS Uniphase Corp. rallied at least 8.2 percent after earnings topped analysts’ estimates.

Deere & Co. dropped 6.3 percent as profit trailed analysts’ estimates and the largest maker of farm equipment cut its full- year forecast. Staples Inc. tumbled 15 percent after reducing its projections amid slower growth.

More than two stocks advanced for each declining on U.S. exchanges at 4 p.m. New York time. The S&P 500 rose 0.1 percent to 1,405.53, after falling as much as 0.2 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 7.36 points, or 0.1 percent, to 13,164.78. Volume for exchange-listed stocks in the U.S. was 4.8 billion shares, 26 percent below the three-month average.

“You’re getting back and forth data that sometimes confirm the potential for QE3, like today, and yesterday brings it into question,” said Andrew Slimmon, Chicago-based managing director of global investment solutions at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, referring to another round of Fed stimulus known as quantitative easing. His firm has $1.7 trillion in client assets. “There is going to be no other expected major news between now and when the Fed meets on Aug. 31. There will be a lot of conjecture back and forth about what they are going to do.”

Industrial production in the U.S. increased in July, Fed data showed today, propelled by a pickup in motor vehicle output and a rebound in utility use during the hottest month on record.

A separate report showed manufacturing in the New York area unexpectedly contracted in August for the first time since October.

The S&P 500 slipped less than 0.1 percent yesterday as a slump in technology and financial shares reversed an earlier rally amid better-than-estimated retail sales. Intraday price swings in the benchmark index have narrowed to a daily average of 0.6 percent during the past eight days, the smallest fluctuation over a comparable period since January 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The index has fluctuated around 1,400 for the past seven trading sessions, with U.S. equity volume reaching the lowest level since at least 2008 excluding holidays and volatility sliding to a five-year low.

“With the volume so light, it doesn’t take much to get a movement in either direction,” Scott Armiger, a money manager at Christiana Trust in Greenville, Delaware, which has $11 billion in client assets, said in a phone interview. “The market just seems to be resisting all the worries here.”

Trading has slowed as vacationing traders awaited policy clues from the Fed’s summit at the end of the month and the European Central Bank meeting in September. The index has rebounded 10 percent from a five-month low on June 1 amid speculation global central banks will introduce further stimulus measures. The Fed will hold off from a third round of bond buying in September amid better economic figures, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a report today.

About 4.5 billion shares changed hands on all venues on Aug. 13, the lowest level in data compiled by Bloomberg going back four years that excludes the days surrounding New Year’s, Christmas, Thanksgiving and Independence Day. Volume averaged 5.8 billion shares a day this month, 13 percent below the average level during the first seven months of 2012.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, known as the VIX, lost 7.1 percent to 13.70 on Aug. 13, the lowest level since June 2007. The VIX fell 1.5 percent to 14.63 today.

Investors are piling into securities that gain should equity volatility increase, a bearish bet on stocks that was last popular when the S&P 500 climbed above 1,400 in March.

Outstanding shares jumped to a record for the three most-used exchange-traded securities that profit from volatility gains in U.S. stocks, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Consumer discretionary, financial and commodities companies in the S&P 500 rose more than 0.3 percent as a group today while energy and utilities stocks performed worst, losing at least 0.3 percent.

Cisco Systems Inc. rose 1.1 percent to $17.35 during regular trading. After the market close, the biggest maker of computer-networking equipment posted profit and sales that beat analysts’ estimates and raised its quarterly dividend by 75 percent. The stock jumped 4.3 percent to $18.10 in extended trading at 5:21 p.m.

Abercrombie & Fitch rallied 9 percent to $35.23. The teen- clothing retailer authorized additional share buybacks and reported second-quarter profit that topped the company’s preliminary report earlier this month.

JDS Uniphase surged 8.2 percent to $11.56. The maker of fiber-optic testing equipment posted fourth-quarter profit excluding some items of 15 cents a share, beating the average analyst estimate of 12 cents in a Bloomberg survey. The company forecast first-quarter sales between $415 million and $435 million, compared with the average analyst estimate for $426.2 million at the time of the company’s release.

Target Corp. added 1.8 percent to $64.50, the highest level since October 2007. The second-largest U.S. discount retailer raised its annual profit forecast as it increases sales by adding groceries and enticing more spending from customers with a discount card.

Facebook Inc., which raised $16 billion in the largest-ever technology initial public offering, rose 4 percent to $21.20. A lockup on shares held by investors begins to expire tomorrow.

The owner of the world’s most popular social network plunged 46 percent from its May debut through yesterday amid concern over the company’s ability to make money from mobile users.

Deere lost 6.3 percent to $75.10. The world’s largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment cut its full-year profit forecast as sales slow in Asia and Latin America, undermining the company’s growth strategy. Profit for the full year will be $3.1 billion, Deere said, compared with its May forecast of $3.35 billion and the $3.33 billion average of 15 analyst estimates.

Staples tumbled 15 percent to $11.49, the lowest close since 2003. The office-supply retailer said results fell short of its expectations in the second quarter because U.S. growth decelerated and demand remained weak in Europe and Australia.

Staples said annual revenue will be unchanged, compared with a May forecast for low-single digit growth. Analysts had estimated a gain of about 1 percent.

The S&P 500 may reach 1,500 this year as the economy picks up momentum in the fourth quarter, according to Byron Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Group LP’s advisory services unit.

“Housing is bottoming, gasoline is down from the beginning of the year, 90 percent of the people in the country have jobs,” Wien said in an interview this morning on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop” show. “The European situation is getting better, not resolved, but getting better. The fiscal cliff will be deferred,” he said, referring to higher taxes and spending cuts that will take effect at year-end unless Congress acts. “There will be more good news than bad.”

Have  a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

Meditation is movement without any motive, without words, and the activity of thought.

It must be something that is not deliberately set about.

Only then is it a movement within the infinite, measureless to man, without a goal, without an end,

without a beginning.  And that has a strange action in daily life, because all life is one,

and then becomes sacred.

Krishnamurti, 1895-1986

As ever,

Carolann

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but a preparation.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875-1926

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

 

Dear Friends,

Tangents:

Today is the day Italians celebrate La Torta dei Fieschi:

When Count Fieschi of Lavagna in Genoa, Italy, was married in 1240, he invited his guests—and everyone else in town—to share a cake that was more than 30 feet high. The citizens of Lavagna haven’t forgotten his generosity, and each year they celebrate the event on August 14. Dressed in costumes, they parade to the town square, where they pin to their clothes a piece of paper (blue for men, white for women) on which a word is written. When they find someone wearing the same word, the couple is given a piece of “Fieschi’s cake.” –from The Free Dictionary by FarLex.

And also on this day in…

1935 – FDR signs Social Security Act.

1945 – Japan’s unconditional surrender becomes public.

1959 – Earvin “Magic” Johnson was born.

1968 – Halle Berry was born.
1973 – The U.S. ends the “secret” bombing of Cambodia.

2003 – Blackout hits Northeast U.S. and Canada.

photos of the day August 14, 2012

Children play in a mud bank while watching a festival inaugurating the Amazon River as one of the seven natural wonders of the world at the mouth of Itaya River in Iquitos, Peru. The Amazon River made it to the list of winners in a global contest conducted by the New Seven Wonders Foundation.

Enrique Castro-Mendivil/Reuters

Gardeners work on a giant carpet made of flowers to form a floral decoration at Brussels’ Grand Place. The design requires about 700,000 flowers to create, according to event organizers.

Francois Lenoir/Reuters

Market Closes for August 14, 2012:

North American Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
Dow  Jones	13172.14	+2.71
		+0.02%
S&P 500	1403.93	-0.18
		-0.01%
NASDAQ	3016.98	-5.54
		-0.18%
TSX	11853.61	+15.28
		+0.13%

International Markets

Market  Index	Close	Change
NIKKEI	8929.88	+44.73
		+0.50%
HANG  SENG	20291.68	+210.32
		+1.05%
SENSEX	17728.20	+94.75
		+0.54%
FTSE 100	5864.78	+32.90
		+0.56%

Bonds

Bonds	% Yield	Previous % Yield
CND.  10 Year Bond	1.857	1.803
CND.   30 Year Bond	2.382	2.334
U.S.   10 Year Bond	1.7309	1.6625
U.S.   30 Year Bond	2.8307	2.7515

Currencies

BOC Close	Today	Previous
Canadian $	1.00772	1.00757
US   $	0.99234	0.99249
Euro Rate  1 Euro=		Inverse
Canadian   $	1.22245	0.81803
US  $	1.23489	0.81176

Commodities

Gold	Close	Previous
London Gold   Fix	1599.65	1609.95
Oil	Close	Previous
WTI Crude Future	93.43	92.73
BRENT	114.93	113.92

Market Commentary:

Canada

By Julia Leite

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks advanced as U.S. retail sales beat estimates and oil rose amid speculation that inventories declined to the lowest level in four months.

Suncor Energy Inc., the nation’s largest oil producer, gained 0.9 percent. Agrium Inc., the largest U.S. farm retailer, climbed 0.6 percent after saying it won’t spin off its retail operations. Gold producer Alacer Gold Corp. slumped 2 percent as it cut its production forecast for the year.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index rallied 56.06 points, or 0.5 percent, to 11,894.39 at 11:43 a.m. in Toronto.

It slipped 0.4 percent yesterday. Energy and financial stocks contributed the most to the advance today among 10 industries in the gauge, while raw-materials shares declined.

“The European economic data wasn’t worse than what people expected, so that was a positive,” Irwin Michael, a portfolio manager at ABC Funds in Toronto, said in a telephone interview.

His firm oversees about C$850 million. “U.S. retail sales were considerably better than expected. I guess people gain a little confidence, which takes gold down and oil up.”

Retail sales in the U.S. rose more than forecast in July, the first gain in four months, as consumer spending rebounded at department stores, auto dealers and electronics outlets. The 0.8 percent increase reported by the U.S. Commerce Department exceeded economists’ projections for a 0.3 percent rise, based on the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey.

Stocks worldwide advanced earlier after Germany said gross domestic product rose 0.3 percent from the first quarter.

Economists predicted a 0.2 percent increase, according to a Bloomberg News survey. French GDP was unchanged in the quarter, better than the 0.1 percent decline economists had predicted.

Oil snapped two days of losses before a U.S. Energy Department report that analysts estimate will show a decline in crude stockpiles last week. Stockpiles probably fell by 1.75 million barrels in the seven days ended Aug. 10 as refiners operated near the highest rates in five years, according to the median response in a Bloomberg survey.

Oil for September delivery advanced 0.8 percent to $93.43 a barrel. Suncor rose 0.9 percent to C$31.80. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., the nation’s third-largest oil company, advanced 2 percent to C$30.66.

Royal Bank of Canada, the nation’s largest lender, gained 2 percent to C$51.93, snapping four days of declines. Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada’s third-largest bank, rose 0.8 percent to C$52.27 after agreeing to buy 51 percent of Colfondos AFP, Colombia’s fourth-largest pension-fund company.

Agrium advanced 0.6 percent to C$96.12 after announcing it would hold onto its retail business following a report that shareholder Jana Partners LLC wants to separate the unit from the more profitable wholesale operations.

Osisko Mining Corp. declined 1.6 percent to C$9.17 as gold fell for a second day, shedding 0.5 percent to $1604.50 an ounce. Alacer Gold fell 2 percent to C$5.93.

US

By Inyoung Hwang

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks erased gains, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lower for a second day, as a slump in technology and financial shares reversed an earlier rally amid better-than-estimated retail sales.

Hewlett-Packard Co. and Cisco Systems Inc. posted the biggest declines in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The S&P 500 Financials Index slipped 0.1 percent after earlier rising as much as 0.7 percent. Alcoa Inc. retreated 1.6 percent, pacing losses among commodity stocks. Home Depot Inc. increased 3.6 percent after quarterly earnings topped analysts’ estimates.

The S&P 500 dropped less than 0.1 percent to 1,403.93 at 4 p.m. in New York, after earlier rising as much as 0.4 percent.

The Dow added 2.71 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 13,172.14. Volume for exchange-listed stocks in the U.S. was about 5.2 billion shares today, 20 percent below the three-month average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“The light volume demonstrates there’s just little conviction right now,” Peter Tuz, who helps manage about $800 million as president of Chase Investment Counsel Corp. in Charlottesville, Virginia, said in a telephone interview. “It is a symptomatic of the fact that people are just not that interested in the equity market.”

Stocks rose early in the day after U.S. retail sales climbed more than forecast in July as consumer spending rebounded at department stores, auto dealers and electronics outlets. The 0.8 percent advance, the first gain in four months, followed a 0.7 percent drop in June, Commerce Department figures showed. Economists projected a 0.3 percent rise, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey.

A separate report showed wholesale prices increased more than forecast in July, reflecting higher costs for automobiles, cigarettes and pharmaceuticals.

Stocks worldwide advanced earlier after the Federal Statistics Office in Germany said gross domestic product rose 0.3 percent from the first quarter. Economists predicted a 0.2 percent increase, according to the median of 40 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. French GDP was unchanged in the quarter, better than the 0.1 percent decline economists had predicted.

“The market was up earlier on light volume,” said Eric Teal, chief investment officer at First Citizens Bancshares Inc., which manages $4.5 billion in Raleigh, North Carolina, said in a telephone interview. “The economic news has been generally on the uptrend in the last few weeks despite ongoing European concerns. With some of the summer seasonal factors affecting the market, volume’s going to be soft.”

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index rebounded after four days of losses, climbing 8.4 percent to 14.85. The gauge known as the VIX lost 7.1 percent to 13.70 yesterday, the lowest level since June 2007.

U.S. equity volume yesterday reached the lowest level since at least 2008 excluding holidays. About 4.5 billion shares changed hands on all venues, the lowest level in data compiled by Bloomberg going back four years that excludes the days surrounding New Year’s, Christmas, Thanksgiving and Independence Day.

Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest maker of personal computers, slid 1.3 percent to $19.36. Cisco, the largest maker of computer-networking gear, lost 1 percent to $17.17. Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker, retreated 0.8 percent to $26.48. Juniper Networks Inc. erased 4.5 percent to $18.07 for the biggest decline in the S&P 500.

Groupon Inc. plunged 27 percent to $5.51, the lowest level since the company’s initial public offering in November. The largest daily-deal website reported second-quarter revenue that missed estimates as economic weakness in Europe curbed online coupon sales. Revenue rose 45 percent to $568.3 million, the Chicago-based company said yesterday. That fell short of the average analyst estimate of $575.3 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Commodity companies lost 0.5 percent for the biggest drop out of 10 groups in the S&P 500. Alcoa, the largest U.S. aluminum producer, retreated 1.6 percent to $8.69. The S&P 500 Financials Index slipped 0.1 percent after earlier rising as much as 0.7 percent.

Retailers had the biggest gain out of 24 groups in the S&P 500, climbing 0.9 percent.

Home Depot, the largest U.S. home-improvement retailer, rose 3.6 percent to $54.71 for the biggest rally in the Dow.

Sales by stores open at least a year advanced 2.1 percent, the fifth straight quarterly increase, as consumers visited more often and spent more per trip.

Estee Lauder Cos., the maker of Mac and Clinique skin care, added 9.3 percent to $60.13. Profit in the fourth quarter was 17 cents a share, exceeding the average analyst estimate by 1 cent. Revenue during the period was $2.25 billion, beating the average projection of $2.21 billion.

Monster Beverage Corp. climbed 10 percent, the most in the S&P 500, to $58.59. The board of directors at the largest U.S. energy drink maker authorized an additional $250 million in buybacks, according to a statement from the company yesterday.

 

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

Man cannot be broken down into emotions, intellect, or action.

Man is a whole.

When these three elements of intellect, feelings, and action are in harmony, they make up man.

Swami Prajnanpad, 1891-1974

As ever,

Carolann

 

Nothing, of course, begins at the time

you think it did.

-Lillian Hellman, 1905-1984

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP, CIM, FCSI

Senior Vice-President &

Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,

St. Andrew’s Square

Suite 340A, 730 View St.,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7