December 21, 2023, Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents: Happy Friday Eve.  Winter Solstice is arriving today!
December 21, 1582: Flanders adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping 11 days making the next day January 1, 1583.
December 21, 1620: Pilgrims land at Plymouth Massachusetts.
On Dec. 21, 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.  Go to article >>

Joseph Stalin, dictator, b. 1879.
Jane Fonda, b. 1937.
Chris Evert, b. 1954.

The good news generator of 2023
Good news can easily get lost when it feels like the world is falling apart. But 2023 hasn’t been all bad! Use CNN’s good news generator for a dose of happy stories from the year.

NFL playoffs are around the corner
With just three weeks of the 2023 regular NFL season remaining, just four of the 14 playoff spots across the two conferences have been sewn up, meaning a lot of teams are vying for a ticket to the postseason. Here are some of the possible scenarios.

2,300-year-old banquet hall found untouched underground in Rome
Archeologists recently discovered an intact Roman mosaic made of shells and coral that could be around 2,300 years old! See photos here.

‘Calendar’ rock carvings surpasses ‘wildest expectations’
Spiral petroglyphs carved into a canyon wall on the Colorado-Utah border may have been used as a calendar by the Ancestral Pueblo. Read More.

New brain-like transistor goes ‘beyond machine learning’
Scientists have previously only gotten ‘synaptic transistors’ to work under cryogenic conditions, but this is the first that can operate at room temperature, while outperforming today’s best-in-class
machine learning systems. Read More.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

New York, US
People look at homes decorated with Christmas lights and ornaments in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn
Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

Leeds, UK
The art installation Magical Night is projected on to the Queens hotel in Leeds. The animation by Onionlab tells the story of a gingerbread man who jumps from window to window of the hotel
Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

Shropshire, UK
‘The quartzite rock of the Stiperstones is a cold stone, rendered even colder under a day-long frost above 500 metres. Nevertheless, the sun offered just enough warmth, allowing one to linger briefly and take in the views across Shropshire and toward Wales.’
Photograph: Charlie Leventon/Guardian Community
Market Closes for December 21^st, 2023

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

MARKET Commentary:
📈 On this day in 1986, Drexel Burnham Lambert, the junk-bond investment-banking powerhouse dominated by Michael Milken, pleaded guilty to six counts of federal securities fraud and paid a $650 million fine. Two days earlier, Drexel Chief Executive Fred Joseph had declared, “It’s very clear that the firm didn’t do anything wrong.”
Canada
By Bloomberg Automation
(Bloomberg) — The S&P/TSX Composite rose 0.8% at 20,765.73 in Toronto.
The move follows the previous session’s decrease of 1.1%.
Toronto-Dominion Bank contributed the most to the index gain, increasing 1.7%.
Energy Fuels Inc/Canada had the largest increase, rising 8.2%.
Today, 193 of 225 shares rose, while 28 fell; all sectors were higher, led by financials stocks.
Insights
* This year, the index rose 7.1%, poised for the best year since 2021
* This quarter, the index rose 6.3%, heading for the biggest advance since the second quarter of 2021
* This month, the index rose 2.6%
* So far this week, the index rose 1.2%
* The index advanced 6.1% in the past 52 weeks. The MSCI AC Americas Index gained 23% in the same period
* The S&P/TSX Composite is 0.6% below its 52-week high on Dec. 20, 2023 and 11.1% above its low on Oct. 27, 2023
* The S&P/TSX Composite is little changed in the past 5 days and rose 3.3% in the past 30 days
* S&P/TSX Composite is trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 16.3 on a trailing basis and 15 times estimated earnings of its members for the coming year
* The index’s dividend yield is 3.2% on a trailing 12-month basis
* S&P/TSX Composite’s members have a total market capitalization of C$3.26t
* 30-day price volatility rose to 11.35% compared with 11.20% in the previous session and the average of 12.00% over the past month
================================================================
|Index Points | |
Sector Name | Move | % Change | Adv/Dec
================================================================
Financials | 52.4023| 0.8| 22/5
Energy | 27.2692| 0.8| 37/4
Materials | 25.4257| 1.1| 49/3
Industrials | 25.4056| 0.9| 24/2
Information Technology | 9.3985| 0.5| 7/3
Consumer Discretionary | 9.0107| 1.2| 12/1
Utilities | 8.4991| 1.0| 15/0
Consumer Staples | 3.1805| 0.4| 6/5
Communication Services | 2.3430| 0.3| 4/0
Real Estate | 1.0695| 0.2| 13/5
Health Care | 0.9122| 1.6| 4/0
================================================================
| | |Volume VS |
| Index | | 20D AVG |YTD Change
Top Contributors |Points Move| % Change | (%) | (%)
================================================================
TD Bank | 17.6400| 1.7| 17.5| -3.3
Canadian Pacific Kansas | 11.9200| 1.8| -7.8| 4.1
Bank of Montreal | 8.8220| 1.4| -26.1| 5.3
CGI Inc | -0.5040| -0.3| -55.3| 21.5
IA Financial | -0.6070| -1.0| -10.5| 13.3
Blackberry | -2.7190| -13.5| 402.7| 7.5
US
By Cristin Flanagan and David Marino
(Bloomberg) — US stocks extended a rebound ahead of Friday data expected to show the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric is close to its target.
The S&P 500, up 1.0% Thursday, is on the precipice of an eight-week winning streak — its longest in more than five years — if it can hold onto gains.
The Nasdaq 100 index faces a similar challenge, the tech-heavy benchmark rose 1.2% after Wednesday’s bout of selling had knocked it off record highs.
Nike Inc. shares slipped around 5% in afterhours trading following a warning from the sneaker maker that revenue would soften in the latter half of the fiscal year.
Peers, including Foot Locker Inc., also weakened in the post market session.
The VIX briefly rose above 14 for the first time since November, Wall Street’s gauge of stock volatility has been trading near multi-year lows.
The Fed’s preferred inflation metric, the so-called core personal-consumption expenditures price index, is broadly expected to hit the central bank’s 2% target when the report comes out ahead of the US stock market open Friday.
Though the devil will be in the details on whether or not the data will back up the Fed Chair’s recent pivot, according to Bloomberg Economics.
Some market watchers blamed Wednesday’s swoon on so-called zero-day, or ODTE, options, noting that hefty “put” volumes likely added to the selloff as some option sellers balanced their books.
But the broader picture of slowing inflation and rate-cut bets mean such speed bumps will be short-lived, many argue.
Citigroup Inc. strategists advised buying into pullbacks, adding investors should “expect volatility ahead, but with an eventual Fed pivot as a north star.”
Vilified Zero-Day Options Blamed by Traders for S&P Decline The global bond rally took a breather Thursday as the yield on the US two-year hovered around 4.35%.
The rate on the US 10-year — tied to everything from mortgage to lending rates — edged up to 3.89%, its still down roughly 50 basis points this month.
“The theme of consolidation remains the most relevant impulse for a market that is quickly approaching the end of the year,” Ian Lyngen of BMO Capital Markets wrote.
“Next week’s price action will be largely irrelevant with the presumption of limited liquidity and even more limited conviction.”
Gross domestic product was revised lower to a 4.9% annualized rise in the third quarter, trailing economists’ projections, the government’s third estimate of the figures Thursday showed.
Initial applications for US unemployment insurance rose last week by less than forecast, remaining near historic lows.
Numbers “were still in line with the narrative that a cooling economy will keep the Fed on track to cut rates in the not-too-distant future,” Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investing at E*Trade from Morgan Stanley, said.
“Right or wrong, that sentiment has played a big role in the market’s recent surge, even though the Fed has been doing its best to temper expectations.”
Following the data, swaps traders are betting on at least six quarter point interest rate cuts from the US central bank by the end of next year, well ahead of the three policymakers signaled last week.
Friday brings UK GDP data, US consumer sentiment and in addition to personal spending data.
In commodities, oil prices retreated after three days of gains, as surging US production tempered the threat of Houthi attacks on ships in one of the world’s most important waterways.
The US dollar resumed a slide, falling against all of its Group-of-10 peers Thursday. 

Key events this week:
* Japan inflation, Friday
* UK GDP, Friday
* US personal income and spending, new home sales, durable goods, University of Michigan consumer sentiment index, Friday

Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
* The S&P 500 rose 1% as of 4 p.m. New York time
* The Nasdaq 100 rose 1.2%
* The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.9%
* The MSCI World index rose 0.7%
Currencies
* The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.6%
* The euro rose 0.6% to $1.1003
* The British pound rose 0.4% to $1.2687
* The Japanese yen rose 0.9% to 142.23 per dollar
Cryptocurrencies
* Bitcoin rose 0.8% to $43,777.83
* Ether rose 2.7% to $2,238.37
Bonds
* The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced four basis points to 3.89%
* Germany’s 10-year yield was little changed at 1.96%
* Britain’s 10-year yield was little changed at 3.53%
Commodities
* West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.3% to $74.01 a barrel
* Spot gold rose 0.6% to $2,044 an ounce
This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.
–With assistance from Sujata Rao and Chiranjivi Chakraborty.

Have a lovely evening.
Be magnificent!
As ever,

Carolann
When his mind is tranquil, perfect joy comes to the man of discipline. –The Bhagavad Gita.

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, CIWM
Senior Investment Advisor

Queensbury Securities Inc.,
St. Andrew’s Square,
Suite 340A, 730 View St.,
Victoria, B.C. V8W 3Y7

Tel: 778.430.5808
(C): 250.881.0801
Toll Free: 1.877.430.5895
Fax: 778.430.5828
www.carolannsteinhoff.com