PrefBlog

Hey, how about that US jobs report, eh?:

America’s jobs engine kept churning in November, the Labor Department reported Friday, a show of continued demand for workers despite the Federal Reserve’s push to curb inflation by tamping down hiring.

Employers created 263,000 jobs, even as a wave of layoffs in the tech industry made headlines. That was only a slight drop from the revised figure of 284,000 for October.

The unemployment rate was steady at 3.7 percent, while wages have risen 5.1 percent over the year, more than expected.
…
Friday’s jobs report suggested that hiring in service industries remained solid, and that wages continued to climb at a rapid pace: jumping by 5.1 percent over the past year, far more than economists expected. Wages in service industries picked up by 5.3 percent on an annual basis, much more than the 2.5 percent that was common in the decade leading up to the pandemic.

Another REIT’s looking sick:

Blackstone Inc limited withdrawals from its $69 billion real estate income trust (REIT) on Thursday after receiving too many redemption requests, an unprecedented blow to a franchise that helped it turn into an asset management behemoth.

The curbs in redemptions came because they hit pre-set limits, rather than Blackstone setting the redemption limits on the day. Nonetheless, they fuelled investor concerns about the future of the REIT, which makes up about 17% of Blackstone’s earnings. Blackstone shares ended trading down 7.1% on the news.

Investors in the REIT, which is not publicly traded, have been growing concerned that Blackstone has been slow to adjust the vehicle’s valuation to that of publicly-traded REITs, which have taken a hit amid rising interest rates, a source close to the fund said. Rising interest rates weigh on real estate values because they make financing them more expensive.

Blackstone has reported a 9.3% year-to-date return for its REIT, net of fees, while the publicly-traded REIT index is down 3.02% in the same period.

I have long been amused by the antics of banks and bankers seeking to convince the world they know anything about investment management. Broker research? Ha! Brokers are great for data and reasonable for ideas … but when it comes to actual, actionable investment advice, you’re better off asking the shoe-shine guy in the lobby. Broker research doesn’t exist for the purpose of improving returns; it exists for the purpose of encouraging you to trade, so they’ll just keep throwing out random ideas in the hopes that one will result in a nice little commission.

But even their data needs to be checked, because even the most cursory investment knowledge is heavily siloed in banks, and God forbid that anybody in the bond department know what a P/E ratio is supposed to be. As a result, silly mistakes get made – in addition to silly advice – one of which got passed on to me this morning in a very irate email addressed to IIROC and copied to me:

This time around, their new rollout of Advanced Dashboard is publishing Ex dividend dates that are 1 day prior to the actual event (and indeed so is the dividend payment date). Their web broker system publishes the accurate data.

Needless to say I sold 5k of a pref (TA.pr.d on nov 29) believing it was ex-d when in fact it was not.

Here are screenshots of my watchlist and best I can tell, ALL the ex-d dates are 1 day early.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 2nd, 2022 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.