November 30, 2018 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Tangents:  HAPPY FRIDAY!

St. Andrew’s Day

Mark Twain, b. 1835
Winston Churchill, b. 1874
Abbie Hoffman, b. 1936
Ben Stiller, b.1965

1924 – November 30 – Communications – RCA sends First wireless transmission of photographs by radio from London to New York City using the wirephoto technology, invented by Winnipeger William Stephenson; takes 20 to 25 minutes per photo; Stephenson first showed the process was in London December 27, 1922; his work laid laid some of the groundwork for the invention of television. London, England.  Go to article

From The New York Times, November 30, 2018:

Details of the last minutes of a doomed Lion Air flight emerged this week thanks to data from the Boeing jet’s so-called black boxes.

Planes did not always have these data recorders. During the first half of aviation’s history, crashes mostly remained a mystery.

A data recorder retrieved from Lion Air Flight 610, which crashed into the Java Sea a month ago.   Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

Enter David Warren, an Australian whose father was killed in an air crash. In the mid-1950s, after helping investigate a plane wreck, he came up with a way to capture information from any plane’s last minutes.

His idea: Embed recording devices that, in case of impact, would cease overwriting old data with new. He prototyped his Flight Memory Unit in 1957.

Flight-data recorders and cockpit voice recorders are now standard, and have helped explain crashes and improve airline safety.

Why are these bright orange units called “black boxes?”

Some think the first one was black, but others point to the term’s meaning in science: a complex entity whose result is known, even if its inner workings are not.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

The Victorian gothic features of Bradford City Hall are picked out in vivid colours as the building is transformed into a giant canvas for a light show by world-leading 3D projection specialists the Colour Project. Credit: Asadour Guzelian

A dog jumps to catch a flying disk as it plays among ginkgo leaves at Yoyogi park in Tokyo, Japan. Credit: Issei Kato/Reuters

A woman takes pictures on Red Square in front of St Basil’s Cathedral as it snows in Moscow. Credit: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP
Market Closes for November 30^th, 2018

International Markets

Bonds

Currencies

Commodities

Market Commentary:
On this day in 1988, private-equity firm KKR won the bidding war to do a leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco for more than $25 billion, generating over $1 billion in fees for Wall Street—and setting the high-water mark for the LBO craze and junk-bond binge of the 1980s.
Canada
By Tatiana Darie
     (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks eked out a gain for a third day to post their best monthly performance since June as the U.S., Canada and Mexico signed a new trade deal. Meanwhile, U.S. stocks also rose as investors turned positive on the outlook for trade ahead of a meeting between the American and Chinese presidents.
     The S&P/TSX Composite Index rose 0.02% on Friday, with health stocks at the front of the pack. Financials and energy shares were the sole underperformers. The head of an Aurora Cannabis Inc. unit said in an interview that the companies that will dominate the global cannabis industry are going to emerge within the next two years amid a flurry of mergers and acquisitions.
Stocks
* Galaxy Digital Holdings fell 4.2 percent after GMP analyst Deepak Kaushal downgraded shares to speculative buy from buy.
* TransCanada erased losses to close little changed after reports that the company can resume certain pre-construction activities, including engineering and meeting with stakeholders, for the Keystone XL oil pipeline following a federal court decision; however, the pipeline will get a new supplemental review from the U.S.
* Enbridge got approval to increase its B.C. gas line to maximum pressure. The company sees capacity on 9L2 segment from Station 9 to Huntingdon increasing to 1.4 bcf/d “over the next few days” after Oct. 9 rupture.
Commodities
* Western Canada Select crude oil traded at a $29 discount to WTI
* Gold fell 0.2 percent to $1,221.40 an ounce
FX/Bonds
* The Canadian dollar slipped 0.08 percent to C$1.3293 per U.S. dollar
* The Canada 10-year government bond yield fell 3.3 basis points to 2.268%
US
By Vildana Hajric and Brendan Walsh
     (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks gained as investors turned positive on the outlook for trade ahead of a meeting between the American and Chinese presidents.
     The S&P 500 Index posted its largest weekly advance since 2011, helped by a dovish turn from the Federal Reserve. Microsoft capped its best weekly gain since 2015 and finished the five days as the world’s most valuable company, surpassing Apple. Oil’s brief dip below $50 a barrel Friday sent energy producers lower and buoyed airlines. Optimistic trade comments from U.S. and Chinese officials provided support for equities ahead of a Saturday dinner meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
     Ten-year Treasury yields resumed their drop toward 3 percent, while the dollar pushed higher. Crude capped its biggest monthly slump in a decade. Emerging-market equities slipped, though Chinese stocks advanced even as data showed the economy remains in a rough patch. The euro weakened with the region’s shares after data showed inflation easing in the region.
     Any sign of a trade truce could tame the greenback’s gains and boost riskier assets including emerging-market currencies and stocks. Trump on Thursday gave conflicting signals on his expectations for reaching a deal with Xi this weekend, as officials work on the contours of an accord that may delay ramping up tariffs on the Asian country in January. Goldman Sachs, however, said an escalation of tensions is the most likely outcome.
     “The market really wants to see a deal with China,” said Peter Mallouk, the co-chief investment officer of Creative Planning, a wealth-management firm with about $36 billion in assets. “If we can get any kind of trade indication in the coming weeks that there was a path to getting a deal done, I think people would be surprised how positively the market would react to that kind of news.”
     The best-case scenario: what the Trump-Xi dinner could yield.
     The first official gauge of China’s economy in November showed manufacturing activity continued to worsen, indicating the authorities will need to keep using stimulus measures as economic growth slows. On Thursday in the U.S., minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting showed the central bank preparing for a more flexible path in 2019.
Coming Up
* Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet at the G-20 summit of world leaders in Argentina that kicked off Friday. Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman are likely to discuss oil policy. 
* Ford, Fiat Chrysler, other automakers report November U.S. sales on Monday. 
* Fed Chairman Jerome Powell testifies on the economic outlook before Congress’s Joint Economic Committee on Wednesday. 
These are the main moves in markets:
Stocks
* The S&P 500 Index rose 0.8 percent at the close of trade in New York; the gauge gained 4.8 percent this week and 1.8 percent in November.
* The Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell 0.2 percent. 
* The Nikkei-225 Stock Average rose 0.4 percent for its sixth consecutive gain. 
* The MSCI Emerging Market Index decreased 0.3 percent.
Currencies
* The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index advanced 0.4 percent. 
* The euro dipped 0.7 percent to $1.1319. 
* The British pound decreased 0.4 percent to $1.2744. 
* The Japanese yen was little changed at 113.52 per dollar.
Bonds
* The yield on 10-year Treasuries dipped two basis points to 3.01 percent, the lowest in more than 10 weeks. 
* Germany’s 10-year yield fell one basis point to 0.31 percent, the lowest in more than 14 weeks. 
* Britain’s 10-year yield was little changed at 1.36 percent. 
Commodities
* West Texas Intermediate crude decreased 1.5 percent to $50.68 a barrel. 
* Gold fell 0.2 percent to $1,222.35 an ounce. 
* Copper fell 0.1 percent to $2.7875 a pound.
–With assistance from Adam Haigh, Christopher Anstey and Robert Brand.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Be magnificent!

As ever,

Carolann

Change is inevitable.  Change is constant.
           -Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881

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
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www.carolannsteinhoff.com