Market View

The US Federal Reserve abandoned projections for any interest rate hikes this year, bringing their three-year drive to tighten monetary policy to an end. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced new spending on middle-class voters in its budget just before October’s vote. EU leaders have given the UK parliament an April 12 deadline as their “last chance” to offer a new Brexit plan or quit without a treaty. Weaker-than-expected German manufacturing data, for the third month in a row, fuelled concerns about global economic growth. With the fresh round of trade talks between the US and China, most Asian indices headed up. Fed’s super-dovish stance for 2019 gas fuelled Gold prices. The Canadian dollar was 74.61 cents. U.S. S&P500 was up 2.6% this week, hitting 2019 highs and TSX ended the week up 0.76%.

All but three subgroups ended the week positive. Real estate jumped the highest by 2.1%, followed by energy 1.3%, financials by 1.1%, and utilities 0.4%. Healthcare slipped by 0.9% and technology by 0.5%. Alimentation Couche-Tard reported a lesser-than-expected quarterly profit as higher costs offset a rise in fuel sales. The most heavily traded shares by volume were Aurora, Bombardier, and Encana.

5 from 5i

Here are five reads we found interesting last week:

-Lessons from a short seller

-There is never a right or wrong answer

-Is there a thing called “perfect investor”?

-Lessons from co-founder of Oaktree Capital, Howard Marks

-Damodaran on Lyft IPO

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