TodayStock futures are slightly down this morning as all major North American indexes look to wrap up another month of solid gains. Today marks the last trading day of August, and it looks like equities have been able to climb up the wall of worry to continue their winning streak. Despite concerns regarding the delta variant, solid corporate earnings and a dovish tone from the Fed has helped push equities higher. The S&P 500 is even on track to post its longest winning streak since 2017 (so much for summer doldrums, right?). With not much news coming out in the U.S. over the next few days, investors are patiently waiting for Friday when key jobs numbers will be released.
Despite the growing turmoil in Afghanistan, the U.S. has finished their evacuation efforts in Kabul. With the last cargo plane departing yesterday afternoon from Kabul, the Pentagon announced that America’s longest war has effectively ended. President Biden is expected to address the nation today, but it does feel like an unceremonious ending to something that has been apart of our lives for the last 20 years.
The data is a touch stale at this point, but the boom continues according to the RLB. Their
quarterly Crane Index, measuring construction activity in 14 major centres notes that the total North American amount continues to rise. Not a surprise given the low-rate fuelled housing boom going on across the country. What about Canada specifically, you ask? Calgary and Toronto are measured (with Vancouver and Montreal being suspiciously absent from the report) with Calgary flat and Toronto up a whopping 68% since the last measure. The Big Smoke now accounts for 43% of all the North American cranes counted by RLW. As anyone who lives at Yonge & Eglinton can attest, it’s a jungle.
China’s technology crackdown now includes video games. China will implement new screen time rules for kids under the age of 18 to curb their growing addiction to what was once described as “spiritual opium”. The new rules will regulate the day, the time and duration in which kids can play online video games. People under the age of 18 will not be permitted to play online games during the school week. Instead, they will be allowed to play Fridays, weekends and public holidays for one hour between 8 pm and 9 pm (not to get too specific). This is compared to the previous rules which allowed kids under 18 to play 1.5 hours a day (
Reuters).
It seems not a day goes by without seeing some legendary investor putting their reputation on the line by calling out the stretched levels of the current market. August has been a winning month, with the S&P 500 up over 3% (3.9% in C$) and the TSX up 1.5%. The S&P 500 is up over 20% YTD, and just scored its 53rd record close and seventh consecutive winning month. The wall of worry is nothing but a pile of rubble, with no significant pullbacks yet this year. We’re not complaining of course, but at some point, we’re all going to have to pay the piper.
Diversion: If you’re missing football, check out this
sport from Japan. The objective is to knock the pole over and it has all the action you need before the NFL kicks off in September.