PrefBlog

TXPR closed at 653.68, up 1.31% on the day. Volume today was 2.82-million, highest of the past 21 trading days.

CPD closed at 12.89, up 0.86% on the day. Volume was 90,270, above the median of the past 21 trading days.

ZPR closed at 10.75 up 0.66% on the day. Volume of 288,710 was well above the median of the past 21 trading days.

Five-year Canada yields were up to 2.76% today.

Canadian GDP disappointed:

Canada’s economic growth slowed in the first quarter of 2022, but an acceleration in demand showed why the Bank of Canada is unlikely to deviate from its course of rapid interest rate hikes.

After adjusting for inflation, gross domestic product grew at an annualized pace of 3.1 per cent, slowing from 6.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2021, Statistics Canada said on Tuesday. While that growth was in line with the central bank’s expectations, it fell short of the median estimate from Bay Street analysts, who called for growth of 5.2 per cent.
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Compensation of employees rose 3.8 per cent in the first quarter in nominal terms, following a 2-per-cent rise in the fourth quarter. It was the largest growth in compensation since 1981, excluding the third quarter of 2020, when the country was rebounding from the first wave of COVID-19.

Canadians also hung on to more of their money. The household savings rate rose to 8.1 per cent from 6.9 per cent – and far above the quarterly average of 3.4 per cent during the 2010s.
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This cycle of monetary policy tightening has already led to weaker sales and falling prices in many of Canada’s exuberant housing markets.

However, that shift hadn’t yet materialized in Tuesday’s GDP report. Investment in residential real estate jumped by 18 per cent, on an annualized basis, driven by expenditures on renovations and costs associated with home purchases.

TXPR closed at 645.24, up 1.06% on the day. Volume today was 1.68-million, above the median of the past 21 trading days.

CPD closed at 12.78, up 0.79% on the day. Volume was 28,790, lowest of the past 21 trading days.

ZPR closed at 10.68 up 0.85% on the day. Volume of 88,010 was third-lowest of the past 21 trading days.

Five-year Canada yields were up to 2.70% today.

There is concern about real wages in Canada:

Yet while wages for Canadian workers appear to be rising – average hourly pay climbed 3.3 per cent in April from the year before – that’s before soaring consumer prices take their bite. In real (inflation-adjusted) terms, wages in April were down more than 3 per cent from the same period a year ago.

Explanations for the wage lag vary. Some argue real wage stagnation is because of a delay in employment contracts reflecting the rise in consumer prices. Businesses that rely on low-paid workers may also have been holding off raising wages in anticipation that Ottawa would ease access to temporary foreign workers, which it did last month in a move that critics warned could suppress wages.

This is well illustrated by a 2015 OECD publication:

Nevertheless, the picture that emerges from focusing on the private sector is rather similar to the results obtained for the whole economy (Figure 4). The cross-country average labour share in the private sector, excluding agriculture, mining, fuel and real estate, was 69.8 per cent in the G20 countries for which data are available in the early 1990s and 65.9 per cent in 2007. On average the contraction over the period was 0.24 percentage points per year. None of the countries for which data are available experienced a significant trend increase. By contrast, the labour share contracted significantly in more than three-quarters of the countries. Very large falls in the labour share were observed in Australia, Canada and Italy where the decline in the private sector labour share exceeded 5 percentage points. The implication is that, in these countries, labour is obtaining an increasingly smaller share of the priate-sector’s pre-tax revenue.

I’ve mentioned in the past – but can’t find it – that the increase in capital’s share of GDP relative to labour is thought to have boosted stock market returns considerably since 1970. If this reverses, that will be a stiff headwind indeed for the next few decades of equity market returns.

I mentioned a new LRCN issued by iA Financial yesterday, but had no further information. A press release has been issued; Assiduous Reader skeptical has kindly provided the text.

The LRCN is a FixedReset, 6.611%+400, paid as interest, which is the equivalent of a dividend paying FixedReset, 5.085%+308 240. That’s a wider spread than the soon to be redeemed IAF.PR.G, which had been scheduled to reset at +285; but on the other hand it moves the liability to higher up on the capital structure (to the holdco from the opco) as well as diversifying the firm’s funding base … and issuers like to diversify their funders as much as funders like to diversify their issuers!

Of course, in the present case, a lot of the new funders will have been put in that position by sleazy or ignorant portfolio management firms, eager to stuff preferred shares (there is no meaningful difference between a preferred share and a LRCN – only technicalities of tax law, which won’t help much when the shit hits the fan) into a bond portfolio, thanks to the naivety of gullible clients with a badly written mandate … but who cares? OSFI wants gullible bond investors to take unsuspected risks, because, um, Canada.

TXPR closed at 635.45, up 0.96% on the day. Volume today was 2.22-million, third-highest of the past 21 trading days.

CPD closed at 12.45, up 0.24% on the day. Volume was 34,180, lowest of the past 21 trading days.

ZPR closed at 10.47 up 0.48% on the day. Volume of 129,610 was below the median of the past 21 trading days.

Five-year Canada yields were down to 2.65% today.

The SEC is proposing a new rule on fund names:

The Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) is proposing to amend the rule under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the “Investment Company Act” or the “Act”) that addresses certain broad categories of investment company names that are likely to mislead investors about an investment company’s investments and risks. The proposed amendments to this rule are designed to increase investor protection by improving and clarifying the requirement for certain funds to adopt a policy to invest at least 80% of their assets in accordance with the investment focus that the fund’s name suggests, updating the rule’s notice requirements, and establishing recordkeeping requirements. The Commission also is proposing enhanced prospectus disclosure requirements for terminology used in fund names, and additional requirements for funds to report information on Form N-PORT regarding compliance with the proposed names-related regulatory requirements.

As far as I can tell though, hedge funds will not be required to change their names to ‘levered up to hell ‘n’ gone’ funds.

In the Frozen North, Blake’s provides Ten Securities Law Fun Facts:

Unlike in the U.S., it is still the case in Canada that posting of material information to an issuer’s website “will not, by itself, be likely to satisfy the “generally disclosed requirement”, meaning that material information should always be first published by way of a press release issued over a newswire (which can be much more expensive than a posting on a company’s own website). Further to National Policy 51-201 Disclosure Standards, as currently drafted: “Investors’ access to the Internet is not yet sufficiently widespread such that a Web site posting alone would be a means of dissemination ‘calculated to effectively reach the marketplace’” and “As technology evolves and as more investors gain access to the Internet, it may be that postings to certain companies’ Web sites alone could satisfy the ‘generally disclosed’ requirement.”
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The Ontario securities law compendium text colloquially known as the “blue book” weighed 4.0lbs in 2004, while the current edition weighs 7.8lbs. Also, while on the topic of “blue”, there is scientific evidence that, until modern times, humans did not actually see the colour blue, meaning that from an anthropocentric perspective, blue did not exist.

We can hope that at some time, enough investors will have gained access to the Internet to allow website posts to meet the ‘generally disclosed’ requirement. But it may take a while, given the expense highlighted by MobileSyrup.com:

The study examined the cost for 135 countries and based life expectancy on the global average of 72 years. Canada lands at 103 on the list, which shows residents will spend an average of $67 a month on the service. Out of the countries examined, only 32 countries charge residents more for internet access.

DBRS has rated some new LRCNs, but I have no further information:

DBRS Limited (DBRS Morningstar) assigned a provisional rating of BBB (high) with a Stable trend to iA Financial Corporation Inc.’s (iA or the Company) Limited Recourse Capital Notes Series 2022-1 and a provisional rating of Pfd-2 with a Stable trend to the Company’s Non-Cumulative Preferred Shares Series A.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.84%, equivalent to 7.59% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates now yield 4.97%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) has narrowed to 260bp from the 270bp reported May 18.