Canada's New Energy 
The chase by Frances Horodelski:

I believe, I hope not naively, that the world is a better place than the events in Paris on Fridaynight. Let’s start the week with solemnity but hope for peace and light to overcome.

After a nasty week (S&P down 3.6%, TSX down 3.5%, Nasdaq down 4.3% while oil dropped 6%), the markets are stable in Europe and the U.S. futures are modestly higher. Bond prices are a little higher. Most commodities are a little stronger while currencies (except the U.S. dollar) are weak-ish. Despite concerns that the after-close announcement of the doubling of margin requirements in China would sink stocks there, the Shenzhen popped 2% The Hang Seng that trades as much with the west as the east did close 1.72% lower.

This week on BNN will be the week-long look at Canada’s New Energy beginning today. Watch for special items all week including a focus on the changes in Fort McMurray.

Here’s the results of a peripatetic walk through the blogs and the papers on the weekend. First, according to ModernGraham.com, the most undervalued of Dow stocks based on analysis of “intrinsic value” are Wal-Mart (70% of that value), Apple (45%), Travelers (43.5%) and IBM (39%). The most expensive stock: Merck (666% of intrinsic value). For those watching, with the Fed, the economic data points that justify a December rate hike, here are a few – November jobs number was the highest in a year and 100,000 jobs about the six year average, U.S. auto sales are rising at the quickest pace in a decade, housing markets are growing at the fastest pace in 15 years and the 2.5% rise in earnings is at a six year high. Rising non-market risk events could result in a “blink” but the fundamentals don’t justify it. For the stock market, from oversold to overbought to oversold again, here are some points. The ratio of highs to lows is now moving back to levels seen when the market was oversold in August/September. And the number of markets trading above their respective 200-day moving averages dropped to zero. Some use these as decent “oversold indicators”. But if you want to be bearish – look at charts of art sales (off the charts), U.S. corporate debt levels (2x levels prior to the financial crisis), corporate spreads are widening. And finally, from a New York Times article on oil (which totally erred on the inventory levels), a market pundit noted “the market isn’t pricing in any risk, geopolitical risk, for oil.”

From Barron’s (which yells “Trump is wrong” on its cover), items of note: 70% of Chinese companies missed earnings expectations in the most recent quarter (versus 75% beating in North America); Bonds bulls are at an anemic 58% (some technicians are saying bonds should be bought), the biggest big board shorts are in General Electric, Corning and Synchrony (the first and third of these connected through a tender offer), Tempur Sealy (highlighted bullishly in the magazine) has 10,000 stock keeping units (SKUs). 10,000! Mattresses! For every 1% move in interest rates, Bank of America revenue changes by $4.5 billion (or 5%). Other bullish stories include Emerson and Genesee & Wyoming Railroad.

This week, items of note include the continuation of retail earnings (Home Depot, Walmart, Lowes in the U.S., Loblaws and Metro in Canada as well as Canadian retail sales at the end of the week), IPO prices for hot deals like Square and Match.com (Wednesday), Kelloggs meets with analysts on Friday (I like the new Special K commercial), Cisco’s new CEO meets with analysts on Thursday), CPR’s President and COO speaks at a conference in Toronto on Tuesday (and BNN will be speaking with him too), The annual Robin Hood conference starts today in New York – Bill Ackman and Jamie Dimon will be there. Today, we’ll have an indepth look at 13F activity. For reference, there were lots of sales and lots of purchases in Valeant during the quarter – some stand outs include initiation of positions at Teachers, Arrow Street, Point 72 and Iguana Health. Sequoia Fund added 2 million shares. For Suncor, William Blair Investment Management initiated a position with 8.3 million shares and Findlay Park almost tripled its position to 6.1 million from 2.1 million shares. We’ll speak to the CEO of DHX Media. We’ll talk energy, we’ll speak to a trillion dollar titan and get lots of Canadian perspective and ideas. Big hotel deal today with Marriott buying Starwood for more than $12 billion. The week begins.

Finally, don’t trust what you read and check the facts. There was a Facebook post circling the globe about the nasty events that closed last week – and nasty it was – Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, Mexico, Japan (the latter were earthquakes). But the conclusion was that 115,000 people had died in all these horrible events. Each life lost is precious – don’t worsen that loss by over-estimating death tolls. Heartless.