June 23, 2017 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:
1817 – Bank of Montreal incorporated with £250,000 capital; Canada’s oldest. 200th Year in business
1896 – Wilfrid Laurier leads Liberals to victory in the 8th general election, beating Tupper’s Conservatives.
1974 – John Diefenbaker sworn in as an MP for a record 12th consecutive time.
1985 – Terrorist bomb downs Air India Flight 182 Boeing 747 from Toronto off the coast of Ireland.

On this day in 1989, director Tim Burton’s version of Batman, starring Michael Keaton, is released in theaters. 
PHOTOS OF THE DAY

A photographer captures the rare moment a group of wasps blow water bubbles.  Lim Choo How, 49, form Kedah, Malaysia, was walking around a factory compound when he noticed the wasp flying round a nest, absorbing water and blowing water away to keep their nest dry.  Lim, who has practiced photography as a hobby for 12 years, rushed back to his office to pick up his camera.  He said: this behavior is rare in macro photography.
CREDIT LIM CHOO HOW/CATERS NEWS

A festival goer in costume on day 1 of the Glastonbury Festival 2017 at Worthy Farm, Pilton in Glastonbury, England.
CREDIT: IAN GAVAN/GETTY IMAGES

Aerial view of the Glastonbury Festival site in Pilton, Somerset, June 22, 2017.  The massive site becomes a city in the countryside for the five days of the biggest festival in Europe with over 150 thousand people enjoying thousands of live acts.
FRANCIS HAWKINS/SWNS.COM
Market Closes for June 23^rd, 2017

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

Market Commentary:
Number of the Day
$1.50
The British pound was trading around $1.27 on Friday, one year after the U.K.’s vote on the Brexit referendum. Before the vote’s results, the pound was at $1.50.
Canada
By Kristine Owram
     (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks closed higher, buoyed by rebounding commodity prices, but Friday’s gain wasn’t enough to prevent energy shares from posting their sixth consecutive weekly loss.
     The S&P/TSX Composite Index added 100 points or 0.7 percent to 15,319.56. Materials shares added 1.8 percent and energy stocks gained 1.2 percent as crude oil, gold and copper prices all rose. However, oil remained in a bear market and the TSX energy index lost 1 percent on the week.
     The information technology index fell 0.6 percent as BlackBerry Ltd. tumbled 13 percent, the most since January 2015. The company reported surprisingly weak first-quarter revenue from software sales.
     In other moves:
* Dream Office Real Estate Investment Trust gained 4.5 percent after selling C$1.7 billion of assets
* Hudson’s Bay Co. fell 5.4 percent following five days of gains. An activist investor is targeting the retailer and urging it to unlock the value of its real estate portfolio
* Home Capital Group Inc. fell 2.1 percent following Thursday’s 27 percent gain.
US
By Jeremy Herron and Meenal Vamburkar
     (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks halted a three-day slide, while Treasury yields and the dollar edged lower as a week dominated by crude’s tumble into a bear market ended with the three major American assets largely unchanged.
     The S&P 500 Index finished the period virtually where it began, as rallies in health-care and tech shares offset a rout in energy producers. Small caps rallied Friday to end higher on the week. Crude capped a fifth straight weekly decline after falling into a bear market. The dollar slipped a third day, though not enough to erase a slight gain in the week. The 10- year Treasury yield fell less than one basis point in the five days as a parade of Federal Reserve officials said little to alter views on the timing for rate increases. Gold rose for a third day to offset a two-day slump and finish the week flat.
     Read more about British markets one year after the Brexit vote
     Weakness in energy prices were the theme of the week, with oil in New York and London dropping into a bear market on concerns that expanding supply in the U.S. and Libya will counter OPEC output cuts. Few signs of contagion emerged though, leaving everything from gold to the dollar to U.S. equities to churn in tight ranges as the traditionally slow summer season began. Europe focused on the negotiations to untangle Britain from the union, while U.S. investors rotated back into technology shares two weeks after pummeling the high flying group.
     Here are the main moves in markets:
     Stocks
* The S&P 500 rose less 0.2 percent to 2,438.16 at 4 p.m. in New York. The index rallied 0.8 percent Monday to close above 2,350 for the first time, only to slide over three days and end 0.2 percent higher in the week.
* The Russell 2000 Index jumped 0.7 percent to cap a weekly gain of 0.6 percent. The operator of the index reshuffled membership Friday.
* Health-care shares in the S&P 500 posted the best week since November amid signs the Trump administration won’t come after drug prices and some positive lab results from biotech firms.
* Energy producers slumped more than 3 percent for their worst week since February 2016.
* The Stoxx Europe 600 Index slipped 0.2 percent, capping a third straight weekly decline. The FTSE 100 Index lost 0.2 percent, for a 0.5 percent drop in the five days.
* The MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose 0.4 percent to finish 1 percent higher in the week.
     Commodities
* West Texas Intermediate crude added 27 cents Friday to settle at $43.01 a barrel, cutting its loss this week to about 4 percent.
* Gold futures rose 0.6 percent to $1,257.10 an ounce, for a third day of gains. 
     Currencies
* The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.3 percent. It added 0.2 percent for the week, after rallying Monday and Tuesday on Fed rate-hike expectations.
* The pound strengthened 0.4 percent to $1.2726, paring its drop this week to 0.5 percent. The euro climbed 0.4 percent to $1.1200.
* The yen rose less than 0.1 percent to 111.29 per dollar. 
     Bonds
* The yield on 10-year Treasuries added less than one basis point to 2.15 percent. It’s virtually unchanged for the week.
* U.K. 10-year gilt yields rose two basis points to 1.03 percent, led by losses in shorter-dated securities as U.K. money markets push odds of a rate hike by the end of 2017 over sixty percent.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Be magnificent!

The important question for me is,
is the body a source for creating, for realizing yourself,
for realizing what life is all about?  You ask this question
and you go where it takes you and then you ask another question
and then again you follow.  So this understanding of the body, of the unity within the body
and the innumerable areas which it reveals to you is what I call realization.
Chandralekha

As ever,

Carolann

Science is organized knowledge.  Wisdom is organized life.
                                       -Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804

Carolann Steinhoff, B.Sc., CFP®, CIM, CIWM
Portfolio Manager &
Senior Vice-President

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

Tel: 778.430.5808
(C): 250.881.0801
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www.carolannsteinhoff.com