Market Commentary

As of last week, the market decline has exceeded the typical 6-8 week pullback that can be seen in bull markets. In this note we will make some observations and suggest that the market behavior warrants caution.
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Towards the later part of April, the market was due for some sort of pullback. The seasonality conspired with the negative events in Europe to deliver a sharp and for many a painful decline. It remains to be seen what will happen going forward. The market should, in theory, rally from here or at...
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The markets on April 16th, 2010 were quite volatile and clearly in pullback mode. Both the S&P/TSX, S&P 500 along with the Nasdaq we down more than 1%. The impressive Venture exchange was only down .75% despite Gold closing 1.91% lower to 1137.3 USD. The catalyst of this drop seems to be, in part,...
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    Last week, on March 12th, the Canadian dollar closed for the first time over the 98 cent level. Adding to the significance of this event is that it is the first weekly close over the key 97.5 level since July/August 2008.  This important, albeit potential, breakout is taking place after a 5 month consolidation between the 92.5...
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The market has been in a sharp set back since peaking on Monday, January 11th. This pullback brought the TSX back close to the widely observed 200 day moving average at just over 10,900. The index closed at 11094 on Thursday February 4th.  It is important to understand that this is a normal and expected...
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There is no shortage of comments concerning the Canadian currency and what the right level it should settle at. However, there is no question that there is a very good correlation between the Canadian dollar and the US stock market as the chart below shows.  Long term, the Canadian dollar should reflect the fundamentals of...
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In this note we present an anotated chart of the S&P TSX Venture index. This is where smallcap/venture investors were affected the most by the crash of 2008. The loss from the peak in May 2007 down to December 2008 was a very discouraging 80%. Smallcaps, however, have always presented opportunity for investors...
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This is quite a simple yet powerful market depth indicator. There are a number of definitions available online such as the one from Investopedia.com: “The advance/decline line is the most popular of all internal indicators by far. It is a very simple measure of how many stocks are taking part in a rally or sell-off. This...
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The favorite saying in real estate is “location, location, location”. One has to pay up for properties in good locations. Investing is similar in this respect. One needs to pay attention to the stocks and sectors outperforming the market. This is where money is flowing and is likely to continue to flow. In this note we...
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From the first impressions,  it seems like this was a rather lackluster day on the TSX. The index was marginally down by 4.67 points. However, there were 44 new 52 week highs and only a single 52 week low (stockcharts.com). These are very strong numbers. Furthermore, there were also more than 22% in advancing...
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