Top o’ the news banner headline! Live, real-time stock quotes for Globe Unlimited subscribers!
We are pleased to bring our Globe Unlimited subscribers live, real-time stock quotes from the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange.
Our Globe Investor readers have asked for this feature for years, since Canadian media websites and portals offer stock quotes with a 15-minute delay. Our real-time quotes, which come with a Globe Unlimited subscription, are sourced from the TSX and reflect a large trading volume, for the most accurate price.
This is the first time a Canadian media site has integrated live stock quotes with market data and breaking news. Our subscribers can now see the latest news on their investments on the same page as real-time stock quotes. You can find them at the top of our company stock quote pages — all you need to do is type in a ticker symbol and click on it to get to the page.
They will probably just be the bare quote (i.e., no depth information, possibly no size), but I won’t know until I’ve looked at it during market hours tomorrow. But one way or another, it’s good news!
The Pension Fund That Doesn’t Do It’s Own Credit Analysis has won a round against S&P:
McGraw Hill Financial Inc. (MHFI)’s Standard & Poor’s unit must face California’s claims it deceived the state’s pension funds in its ratings of mortgage-back securities, a judge said in a provisional ruling.
California Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow in San Francisco said yesterday he was inclined to deny the company’s request to throw out the state’s claims of deceptive conduct from a lawsuit alleging S&P violated false-advertising and business practices laws.
…
The California pension systems bought the securities because they had received AAA ratings, signaling they were low-risk, California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in the lawsuit.
Rob Ford doesn’t believe in corporate welfare:
The deal to expand BMO Field will see Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment pony up $90 million to add a second deck, a roof over the stands and make it both football and soccer friendly.
But for it to go ahead they will be asking all three levels of government for $30 million, which would include a $10-million loan from Toronto.
“I just don’t think the taxpayers should have to pay for it,” said the mayor. “It should be paid for by the private sector. It would be nice if we wanted to expand Deco Labels and have the taxpayers help us out, but it doesn’t work like that.”
Ford says taxpayers already built a stadium on the CNE grounds to the tune of $55 million in cash and land contributions and if MLSE wants to change it, it should be them who pays for it.
… so naturally he’s getting criticized again:
It’s a measure of his frustration with Ford’s attempt to make the expansion of BMO Field a political issue that Leiweke chose this venue to air his grievances.
Leiweke first talked about the surprisingly decent weather, before segueing to more prosaic matters.
“The other good news I had today is that the mayor’s going to vote against our (stadium expansion) plan, which probably means we win 42-2.”
I don’t know the details on this particular issue, but I do know that the city got taken to the cleaners by the MLSE welfare bums on the initial deal:
Even before the team began playing its owner, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, partnered with all three levels of government to build the team’s home stadium. MLSE pledged $18 million to the stadium’s $62.8 million cost, while the city contributed $9.8 million in cash and donated land worth $10 million.
MLSE quickly recouped its initial investment by selling the stadium’s naming rights to Bank of Montreal for a reported $27 million, but the cash-strapped city’s return on investment has materialized more slowly.
Monday MLSE and the city issued a joint press release stating that BMO Field had tuned a $1.1 million profit, which the city and MLSE would split.
In the five years since the stadium opened the city’s share of the profits has totaled $1.75 million, enough to make author Dave Zirin wonder whether Toronto had wasted cash on a team that didn’t need its help.
“The people of Toronto would be better off if that money was dropped from a plane and people could just pick it up and spend it (locally)” says Zirin, author of Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love. “Every bit of factual data shows that the return on the investment is just not worth it.”
Poor Rob! He never learned the rules of the Club: when you get some influence, you have to grease the other club members. If he’d followed that rule, I don’t think there would be quite so many other issues.
A buddy sent me a link to Did Hyman Minsky find the secret behind financial crashes?:
The “Minsky moment”, a term coined by later economists, is the moment when the whole house of cards falls down. Ponzi finance is underpinned by rising asset prices and when asset prices eventually start to fall then borrowers and banks realise there is debt in the system that can never be paid off. People rush to sell assets causing an even larger fall in prices.
It is like the moment that a cartoon character runs off a cliff. They keep on running for a while, still believing they’re on solid ground. But then there’s a moment of sudden realisation – the Minsky moment – when they look down and see nothing but thin air. Then they plummet to the ground, and that’s the crisis and crash of 2008.
Those of a historical bent may find amusement in my market report of November 23, 2007:
Times are tough. There’s a big indigestible mass of dubious debt on the books all over the place, but – as far as I can see – the financial system is not melting down and we are not in a depression. I’ll simply repeat what I’ve been saying for the past several months: Times are tough. Firms that have been living on the edge may find they fall off. There may even be a spectacular blow-up or two, if a financial institution finds out its risk controls aren’t what they might have wished them to be. And I most certainly would not want to be earning my living as a casual labourer in the US housing industry. But it’s a pause, nothing more.
We arrived at the Minsky Moment about ten months later. To my astonishment, the blog Naked Capitalism is still going strong … gloom, doom and complete lack of analytical ability sells well!
It was a good day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts winning 20bp, FixedResets gaining 11bp and DeemedRetractibles up 12bp. There were quite a few performance highlights, all but one of them winners. Volume was below average.
| HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices Values are provisional and are finalized monthly |
|||||||
| Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) |
Median YTW |
Median Average Trading Value |
Median Mod Dur (YTW) |
Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
| Ratchet | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | -0.5150 % | 2,410.1 |
| FixedFloater | 4.72 % | 4.32 % | 37,507 | 17.70 | 1 | 0.0497 % | 3,596.0 |
| Floater | 3.02 % | 3.11 % | 51,502 | 19.44 | 4 | -0.5150 % | 2,602.3 |
| OpRet | 4.65 % | -0.36 % | 87,921 | 0.24 | 3 | 0.0258 % | 2,685.9 |
| SplitShare | 4.81 % | 4.35 % | 67,552 | 4.30 | 5 | -0.0953 % | 3,079.0 |
| Interest-Bearing | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.0258 % | 2,456.0 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.63 % | -2.05 % | 90,186 | 0.08 | 11 | 0.1574 % | 2,360.4 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.44 % | 5.50 % | 117,155 | 14.55 | 26 | 0.2000 % | 2,446.2 |
| FixedReset | 4.69 % | 3.50 % | 224,032 | 4.43 | 79 | 0.1110 % | 2,517.5 |
| Deemed-Retractible | 5.05 % | 2.84 % | 157,064 | 0.34 | 42 | 0.1185 % | 2,470.8 |
| FloatingReset | 2.62 % | 2.61 % | 185,870 | 7.07 | 5 | 0.0723 % | 2,445.7 |
| Performance Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| BAM.PR.K | Floater | -1.67 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-03-24 Maturity Price : 16.52 Evaluated at bid price : 16.52 Bid-YTW : 3.17 % |
| ELF.PR.G | Perpetual-Discount | 1.02 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-03-24 Maturity Price : 21.80 Evaluated at bid price : 21.80 Bid-YTW : 5.55 % |
| FTS.PR.H | FixedReset | 1.07 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-03-24 Maturity Price : 21.42 Evaluated at bid price : 21.74 Bid-YTW : 3.73 % |
| ENB.PR.A | Perpetual-Premium | 1.19 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-04-23 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.60 Bid-YTW : -18.30 % |
| IFC.PR.A | FixedReset | 1.30 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.19 Bid-YTW : 4.12 % |
| BAM.PR.N | Perpetual-Discount | 1.57 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-03-24 Maturity Price : 20.70 Evaluated at bid price : 20.70 Bid-YTW : 5.77 % |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Shares Traded |
Notes |
| RY.PR.Z | FixedReset | 96,552 | RBC crossed blocks of 49,300 and 14,200, both at 25.50. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2019-05-24 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.51 Bid-YTW : 3.70 % |
| TRP.PR.B | FixedReset | 68,539 | Nesbitt crossed 60,000 at 20.20. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-03-24 Maturity Price : 20.10 Evaluated at bid price : 20.10 Bid-YTW : 3.83 % |
| BAM.PR.X | FixedReset | 60,034 | RBC crossed 49,900 at 21.38. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2044-03-24 Maturity Price : 21.37 Evaluated at bid price : 21.37 Bid-YTW : 4.36 % |
| MFC.PR.F | FixedReset | 56,979 | Scotia crossed 51,100 at 22.50. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 22.45 Bid-YTW : 4.61 % |
| MFC.PR.A | OpRet | 51,140 | RBC crossed 48,900 at 25.59. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-06-19 Maturity Price : 25.25 Evaluated at bid price : 25.53 Bid-YTW : -0.36 % |
| BNS.PR.Z | FixedReset | 33,185 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.34 Bid-YTW : 3.71 % |
| There were 25 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares. | |||
| Wide Spread Highlights | ||
| Issue | Index | Quote Data and Yield Notes |
| BAM.PR.B | Floater | Quote: 16.69 – 17.03 Spot Rate : 0.3400 Average : 0.2098 YTW SCENARIO |
| MFC.PR.K | FixedReset | Quote: 24.44 – 24.71 Spot Rate : 0.2700 Average : 0.1797 YTW SCENARIO |
| BAM.PR.K | Floater | Quote: 16.52 – 16.89 Spot Rate : 0.3700 Average : 0.2862 YTW SCENARIO |
| GWO.PR.F | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 25.32 – 25.57 Spot Rate : 0.2500 Average : 0.1717 YTW SCENARIO |
| CIU.PR.C | FixedReset | Quote: 21.78 – 22.19 Spot Rate : 0.4100 Average : 0.3392 YTW SCENARIO |
| TD.PR.Q | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 26.30 – 26.50 Spot Rate : 0.2000 Average : 0.1397 YTW SCENARIO |