November 23, 2017 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:
1936 – Life magazine premiered.
On Nov. 23, 1943, during World War II, United States forces seized control of the Tarawa and Makin atolls from the Japanese.
Go to article »

In his review of Mary Oliver’s book of poems, Devotions –  a collection that spans five decades – Danny Heitman, notes that Oliver is primarily a writer about the natural world.   “Like Henry David Thoreau, who famously did a lot of travelling in Concord, Mass., Oliver was mostly inspired by her long walks within the woods and along the shoreline of Provincetown, Mass….Oliver is perhaps the most peripatetic poet since William Wordsworth.  Like Wordsworth, Oliver deftly communicates physical movement in her poems, even though many of them ostensibly celebrate the serenity of standing still.  In “The Dog Has Run Off Again,” the grammatically fastidious Oliver nevertheless forgoes conventional punctuation to simulate a rushing current:

but it has been raining all night
and the narrow creek has risen
is a tawny turbulence is rushing along
over the mossy stones
is surging forward
with a sweet loopy music
and therefore I don’t want to entangle it
with my own voice
calling summoning
my little dog to hurry back

   The creek’s momentum chimes with an emotional current  in the narrator, who’s overcome by the wonder of the landscape:

look the sunlight and the shadows are chasing each
other
listen how the wind swirls and leaps and dives up and
down
who am I to summon his hard and happy body
his four white feet that love to wheel and pedal
trough the dark leaves
to come back to walk by my side, obedient

Oliver’s poems are often an exercise in ecstasy, charting those moments when the temporal is touched by the transcendental.  A continuing theme of her work is the way that such perceptions can suddenly alter an ordina4ry hour, as in her poem “Drifting”:

I was enjoying everything: the
rain, the path
  wherever it was taking me, the
earth roots
  beginning to stir.
  I didn’t intend to start thinking
about God,
  it just happened.

Danny Heitman in a columnist with The Advocate newspaper in Louisiana and the author of A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.
PHOTOS OF THE DAY 

A six-year-old boy plays in front of yellow ginkgo leaves at a park in Tokyo.

Details of the lighting are pictured on the ceiling of the Executive Board meeting room at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva.

A villager hangs hand-made noodles up to dry in Linyi, Shandong province, China.
Market Closes for November 23rd, 2017

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

Market Commentary:
Canada
By Kristine Owram
     (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks were virtually unchanged with trading volume well below average because of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, as gains in commodity stocks offset declines in most other sectors.
     The S&P/TSX Composite Index rose less than 1 point to 16,074.30 on volume that was 73 percent below the 100-day average. The materials sector posted the biggest gain, adding 0.5 percent as copper prices rose. A strike at the world’s biggest copper mine pointed to potential supply risks in 2018.
     Energy shares gained 0.3 percent as crude prices rose above $58 a barrel to a two-year high. An outage in TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone pipeline is adding to optimism that the U.S. glut is waning.
     In other moves:
                          Stocks
* Metro Inc. fell 2.5 percent to a two-month low. RBC downgraded the stock, saying it needs to deliver better underlying results to support its valuation
* Calfrac Well Services Ltd. gained 5 percent after the Wilks brothers added to their holdings in the company, bringing their total stake to 20 percent
                          Commodities
* Western Canada Select crude oil traded at a $17.25 discount to WTI
* Aeco natural gas traded at a $1.42 discount to Henry Hub
* Gold fell 0.1 percent to $1,291.32 an ounce
                           FX/Bonds
* The Canadian dollar weakened 0.2 percent to C$1.2716 per U.S. dollar after retail sales grew less than expected in September
* The Canada 10-year government bond yield fell one basis point to 1.89 percent, the lowest since early September
US
MARKETS CLOSED FOR THANKSGIVING.

Have a wonderful evening everyone.

Be magnificent!

The supreme consideration is man.
Mahatma Gandhi

As ever,

Carolann

Fate chooses your relations, you choose your friends.
                                 -Jacques Delille, 1738-1813

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
Toll Free: 1.877.430.5895
Fax: 778.430.5828
www.carolannsteinhoff.com