Skip to main content

Canada's TIC report: On track, more or less!

The magic figure this month is $7.8 billion, that the capital inflow (mostly into T-bills).  Last month, the bulk of capital inflow was money market so this is a shift in the type of assets being purchased.  Interestingly, stocks investment inflow remain at "depressed" levels (still growing but getting very small).

One reason, is that foreign investors have already reached their equity capital allocation target for Canada (ok its possible -- and make more sense than other options), and are seeking safety in Canada's T-bill market.  As usual, the bulk of this fixed income is in the form of federal instrument (as opposed to provincials). This supports the thesis that foreign investors are "parking" their cash in Canada (rather than investing in Canada), looking for safety rather than income.  

Again the preference for ultra liquid T-bills (instead of T-bonds) speaks volume as to foreign investors' risk appetite.  One more headache for  the Bank of Canada.

Finally, the CAD is back to near parity (driven by last week's "risk-On" mentality).  Of course the real test for all this stuff is the October 23rd meeting in the EU on what to do with the crisis!  My bet: kick the can down the road... the "victory" in getting Hungary on board was, lets not forget, about the June EFSF.  It doesn't come close in resolving the problems now -- where its $3 or $4 trillion (thousand billion) that is needed.

I have always said that Canada is a second derivative country (we supply stuff to make stuff) and the events in China should not be discounted, housing sales have fallen by half (Chinese policy) in an effort by the central government to tackle inflation (running at 6% -- food inflation is around 13%, when the official inflation target is 4%).  This will reduce the demand for steel, concrete, wood and energy.  Several sector in which Canada is a dominant trading partner.  

It could get intersting

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

 First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone.  These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days:  (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world.  That means criminal prosecution.   (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive.   So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000.     I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this.  Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles.   I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence.    Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you.  I am relatively certain that the airline industry will slap them with no-fly status. Update;  It seems that what they threw on the airc

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki