Sunday, February 5, 2017: January 2017 was quite the month wasn't it? With the new president in the US making waves, as of January 31, the S&P 500 was up 1.79%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.64% and the TSX Composite was up 0.51%. Markets performed better than this time last year. The Canadian dollar gained about 3% vs. the US dollar. Oil was up just under 2% while gold was up 3.4% in US dollar terms. The US Fed held interest rates steady at its January policy meeting. Macro indicators in Canada and the US, as well as quarterly earnings, are looking OK so far.
There are a number of new blog posts on money4retirement.ca since the last newsletter, in case you missed them. They focus on risks in the equities markets that have cropped up or could be on the horizon. In particular a review of the major types of risks investors face, and how those risks may have changed with a new president, is provided here. Two new US executive orders that affect the regulation of the financial sector that may have significant implications for retail investors (whether they own US securities or not) are discussed here. See all the blog posts here.
Jan, a member of the Ottawa Share Club executive, has provided a copy of his informative presentation from our January 10th meeting that reviews equity markets in 2016 using the filter of ETFs here. He offers some suggestions for 2017 as well. I have also published the 2016 year-end review of the Ottawa Share Club fantasy portfolios here.
Speaking of the Ottawa Share Club fantasy portfolios, the growth and income portfolios were both in positive territory as of January 31 (year to date). The OSC fantasy growth portfolio advanced 0.8% and the OSC fantasy income portfolio advanced 0.5%. They are both pretty much on track with their own return objectives. Note these figures are from Google Finance and repesent price returns only, not interest and dividends. If you're new to them, more on the OSC fantasy portfolios can be found here.
As a reminder, the next meeting of the Ottawa Share Club is on Tuesday, February 21. The full schedule, meeting location and contact information can be found here.
If you're a subscriber to the Canadian MoneySaver, you may have seen my article on investing in the e-commerce secular trend. I hope to publish a free version on money4retirement.ca in a couple of months, but for now it can be found on the Canadian MoneySaver site here. I hope to publish more articles in future on secular trends.
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Until next time, all the best with your investing!
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