June 15, 2023, Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents: Happy Friday Eve.

June 15, 1215: King John of England signs the Magna Carta – the first document to put into writing the principle that the king and his government was not above the law.  It sought to prevent the king from exploiting his power.

1992: Vice President Dan Quayle erroneously instructed a Trenton, N.J., elementary school student to spell potato as “potatoe” during a spelling bee. –Go to article  .

Sportscasting legend hit in the face with foul ball while calling the game.  Ouch… Yankees broadcaster John Sterling was bonked by a foul ball while doing his
live play-by-play. Watch the video here.

New York is going to war with rats. Paris is talking about making peace with them.  New York City is declaring outright war on rats while Paris is looking into an ambitious plan of “cohabitation” with its furry inhabitants.

Orcas are attacking boats in Europe.  Watch the heart-racing moment a group of orcas broke a boat with passengers on board.

Curiosity rover captures dramatic new portrait of the Martian landscape.  These new photos show the dramatic, colorful hues of morning and afternoon light on the surface of Mars.

Thanks to Netflix, a tiny Swiss town has more visitors than locals.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Taipei, Taiwan
A Godzilla mural, which is almost 50 metres tall, adorns a hotel.  Photograph: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images.

Tynemouth, UK
Sea mist rolls in over the lighthouse and Tynemouth Priory.  Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA.

Many forests in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, benefit from naturally occurring, low-intensity wildfires. Without fire, trees grow unnaturally dense, and dead logs accumulate on the forest floor. This timber can collide with hotter, drier conditions and cause explosively large wildfires. Now forest managers are trying to reverse a century of misguided management by igniting controlled burns. The landscape may look different, but as this haunting image of a burned spruce forest shows, they can be equally captivating.CPhotograph: Miquel Angel ArtusIllana/BigPicture.
Market Closes for June 15^th, 2023

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

Market Commentary:
📈 On this day in 1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt took almost single-handed control over U.S. economy with a series of new laws. The Glass-Steagall Act limited the activities of commercial banks. The National Industrial Recovery Act established a $3.3 billion public works program and gave the government unprecedented powers over railroads and other industries.
Canada
By Bloomberg Automation
(Bloomberg) — The S&P/TSX Composite advanced slightly to 20,027.35 in Toronto.
First Quantum Minerals Ltd. contributed the most to the index gain and had the largest move, increasing 7.6%.
Today, 110 of 232 shares rose, while 121 fell; 4 of 11 sectors were higher, led by financials stocks.
Insights
* This quarter, the index fell 0.4%
* So far this week, the index rose 0.7%, heading for the biggest advance since the week ended April 14
* The index advanced 2.1% in the past 52 weeks. The MSCI AC Americas Index gained 16% in the same period
* The S&P/TSX Composite is 3.9% below its 52-week high on Feb. 2, 2023 and 12.1% above its low on Oct. 13, 2022
* The S&P/TSX Composite is up 0.4% in the past 5 days and fell 2.5% in the past 30 days
* S&P/TSX Composite is trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.1 on a trailing basis and 13.8 times estimated earnings of its members for the coming year
* The index’s dividend yield is 3.3% on a trailing 12-month basis
* S&P/TSX Composite’s members have a total market capitalization of C$3.19t
* 30-day price volatility fell to 11.82% compared with 11.93% in the previous session and the average of 11.15% over the past month
================================================================
|Index Points | |
Sector Name | Move | % Change | Adv/Dec
================================================================
Financials | 23.6675| 0.4| 18/11
Energy | 13.5712| 0.4| 35/5
Industrials | 0.7562| 0.0| 14/13
Consumer Discretionary | 0.5794| 0.1| 7/8
Health Care | -0.0341| -0.1| 2/4
Consumer Staples | -0.8805| -0.1| 4/7
Real Estate | -2.4812| -0.5| 8/13
Communication Services | -2.7941| -0.3| 1/4
Materials | -5.9406| -0.3| 15/35
Information Technology | -6.8873| -0.4| 3/9
Utilities | -7.2875| -0.8| 3/12
================================================================
| | |Volume VS |
| Index | | 20D AVG |YTD Change
Top Contributors |Points Move| % Change | (%) | (%)
================================================================
First Quantum Minerals | 9.1550| 7.6| 218.9| 17.7
TD Bank | 8.3510| 0.8| 21.6| -8.1
RBC | 6.2550| 0.5| -43.2| -1.2
BCE | -2.3430| -0.6| 71.0| 0.9
Shopify | -3.4050| -0.5| -9.0| 86.0
Barrick Gold | -7.0960| -2.6| 39.3| -6.1
US
By Rita Nazareth
(Bloomberg) — The stock rally driven by the exuberance surrounding artificial intelligence is widening beyond the tech industry, defying naysayers and raising concern about an overbought market.
Mounting bets that the Federal Reserve will end its tightening cycle sooner rather than later to prevent a recession added fuel to the equity advance, with the S&P 500 topping 4,400 and rising for a sixth straight day.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average extended its advance from a September low to almost 20%, while the Nasdaq 100 closed at its highest since March 2022.
Microsoft Corp., which has unveiled a procession of AI-based products in recent months, climbed to a record.
Lennar Corp. led a rally in homebuilders on a bullish outlook.
Restaurant chain Cava Group Inc. soared in its trading debut.
Delta Air Lines Inc. climbed for a 15th straight session as its board voted to restart the quarterly dividend.
A gauge of US-listed Chinese stocks jumped with Beijing seen rolling out more stimulus to help the economy.
Wall Street’s fervor will face a big test on Friday as a massive amount of options contracts tied to stocks and indexes are set to mature.
The event, known as OpEx, typically obliges traders to either roll over existing positions or start new ones. That usually involves portfolio adjustments that lead to a spike in volume and sudden price swings.
Equities continued to gain traction after the US benchmark crossed the bull-market threshold last week, surging more than 20% from its October low.
Traders kept piling into stocks even after the S&P 500’s 14-day relative strength index topped 70 — which is seen by some traders as one indication of an overbought market.
“US stocks have defied skeptics and rallied this year in the face of bank collapses, constant fears of a recession, and what’s expected to be a slowdown in corporate profits,” said Arthur Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth. “For our part, we assume that inflation will look better in the second half.”
Market breadth has improved notably, with multiple sectors exhibiting stronger relative strength trends, according to Dan Wantrobski at Janney Montgomery Scott.
“All this being said, our concern grows that leadership areas like the Nasdaq 100 index and S&P 500 remain very overbought/extended on a short-term basis,” wrote Wantrobski.
“While we understand that overbought conditions such as these can last for some time, we also understand that historical data illustrates they cannot be sustained indefinitely.”
Wantrobski says there’s still a “high probability” of a pullback ahead as we move beyond June.
In fact, the rally in equities faces a fresh threat over the next few weeks with the world’s biggest money managers set to unload as much as $150 billion of stocks.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. projects real-money portfolios will tilt back in favor of bonds to meet allocation targets, in the largest rebalancing flows to the asset class since the fourth quarter of 2021.
The periodic rejigging could knock off as much as 5% from the price of global stocks, according to estimates by JPMorgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou.
Bonds climbed Thursday, with the yield on 10-year Treasuries declining seven basis points to 3.71%.
The dollar slumped the most since February.
The euro rallied as the European Central Bank lifted interest rates by another quarter-point, with President Christine Lagarde describing a further hike in July as “very likely.”
The move came a day after Fed officials paused their series of interest-rate hikes, but projected borrowing costs will go higher than previously expected, owing to what Chair Jerome Powell called surprisingly persistent inflation and labor-market strength.
The Fed is now in a “data-dependent” mode before it delivers what may be just one final increase in US borrowing costs next month, former Vice President Richard Clarida said.
“It was what I would call an awkward but hawkish pause,” Clarida, who is now a global economic advisor at Pacific Investment Management Co. told Bloomberg Television on Thursday.
The US economy is holding up, but losing steam.
While an advance in retail sales last month exceeded nearly every estimate, the report also showed consumer demand has moderated from the past year.
Separate data showed factory production remained sluggish and applications for unemployment benefits held at the highest level since late 2021.
Elsewhere, oil rebounded as strengthening demand in China outweighed concerns over further interest rate hikes in the US.
West Texas Intermediate futures traded near $70 a barrel on Thursday after falling 1.7% in the previous session. 
Key events this week:
* Bank of Japan rate decision, Friday
* US University of Michigan consumer sentiment, Friday

Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
* The S&P 500 rose 1.2% as of 4 p.m. New York time
* The Nasdaq 100 rose 1.2%
* The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.3%
* The MSCI World index rose 1%
Currencies
* The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.7%
* The euro rose 1.1% to $1.0947
* The British pound rose 0.9% to $1.2783
* The Japanese yen fell 0.1% to 140.26 per dollar
Cryptocurrencies
* Bitcoin rose 2.1% to $25,442.19
* Ether rose 1.8% to $1,668.22
Bonds
* The yield on 10-year Treasuries declined seven basis points to 3.71%
* Germany’s 10-year yield advanced five basis points to 2.50%
* Britain’s 10-year yield was little changed at 4.38%
Commodities
* West Texas Intermediate crude rose 3.3% to $70.52 a barrel
* Gold futures rose 0.1% to $1,971.30 an ounce
This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.
–With assistance from Richard Henderson, John Viljoen, Vildana Hajric, Carly Wanna, Isabelle Lee and Peyton Forte.
Have a lovely evening.

Be magnificent!
As ever,

Carolann
It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people,
but care more about their opinions than our own. –Marcus Aurelius, 112 AD-180 AD.

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