By now you almost assuredly know that Shopify (SHOP.TSX) announced a 10:1 stock split effective on a date to be announced. With that announcement, SHOP joins Alphabet and Amazon in the club of internet stocks with high prices and pending stock splits. Although news of a stock split is generally considered a positive, let’s...
The COVID crisis has been especially hard on airline stocks. The stock price of Canada’s largest airline, Air Canada, collapsed from over $50 in January to $10 in March. Although the stock has recovered somewhat since then, when compared to other equities the bounce has been anemic. Chart 1: Air Canada (symbol AC) over past...
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” This old adage refers to the idea that it is impossible for anyone to get something for nothing. Even if something is free, someone somewhere is paying for it. However, investors have the choice to either accept a price or not, that is why we have limit orders. Imagine if...
Are you expecting the price of a security to rise, and you have a target price in mind? In this article, you will learn how to choose the right strike price to optimize your return if the security reaches your target price by the time your call option expires. Analysis of Descartes Systems Group Inc. (DSG) In this article, we...
In this article, we’ll talk about exercising call options and why investors would want to do so. Read the article to find out the pros and cons of exercising a call option. You discover a pharmaceutical company that trades at $100 a share and has a COVID-19 vaccine in phase 3 clinical testing. It’s extremely promising, but...
During the COVID crisis the stock market declined, but energy stocks were particularly hard hit as the price of oil plunged to levels never before seen. During the panic selling, one of Canada’s largest energy companies, Suncor Energy (ticker SU) left a gap from $33.52 to $30.19. (A down gap is where the price opens on the...
Although the broad Canadian stock market index has almost recovered to its pre-COVID crisis high, there is one sector that has lagged badly. The energy sector has not recovered to anywhere near the levels seen in early 2020. Chart 1: iShares S&P/TSX Capped Energy ETF (symbol XEG) 2019-2020 Source: Bloomberg For those who...
The coronavirus crisis seemed to come out of nowhere. It caught retail and professional investors off guard equally. Almost overnight many stocks fell by more than 25%, and although some have managed to recoup their losses over the past few months, many have not. What is an investor to do in such an environment? One could...
Have you ever been in the fortunate position of holding a stock that had rallied a long way, but you were concerned it had gone too far too fast, yet you did not want to sell your position? Or, have you ever thought that the market would go sideways for a while, and you did not expect your stocks to rally? Maybe you have seen...
The past few months have been challenging for investors. During the first month of the coronavirus crisis, the stock market fell from record highs with unprecedented speed. Meanwhile, the subsequent rally has been just as befuddling to many. Canada’s most liquid stock index ETF, the XIU, plunged from $27 to $17 (a loss of...