Business

When we first said three weeks ago that the spectacular, sudden implosion of Canada's largest alt-lender Home Capital Group or HCG - whose fate we had followed closely since 2015 - was Canada's own "New Century Moment", the parallels were more than just the obvious: like in the US, it took the market nearly a year to realize the full implications of the subprime collapse which first manifested in the failure of New Century and its subprime lender peers.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came away from April 16th’s referendum with a narrow, if not questionable, win. As a result of the vote, Turkey’s constitution will be amended to allow the President of the Republic to amass considerably more power. For Erdogan, this means that, among other things, he could stay on the throne until 2029. If that weren’t enough, he will not face much in the way of checks and balances.

     “The hope that consumer and business spending will surge is probably just that, hope.”

      - Joel Naroff, President of Naroff Economic Advisors and TDn2K Economist

With 91% of companies in the S&P500 having reported earnings for the first quarter, Q1 2017 earnings season is almost fully in the history books, and is shaping up as the best quarter for annual earnings growth in six years. According to FactSet, the blended earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 in the first quarter is 13.6%, up from 13.5% last week, while revenue is poised to grow 7.8% Y/Y. The rise in profits was a function of both solid sales growth (+7.8%) and a 41 bp expansion in margins to 9.4%.

For the first time ever, the number of market indexes now exceeds the number of U.S. stocks...