In Canada, we went into full election mode in September with new (and embarrassing/offensive) revelations about our current Prime Minister's past behavior. It was yet another embarrassing situation for Mr. Trudeau and likely one he didn't want coming up a month from the vote! As I write this, the Canadian election polls have things very close between the two front-runners, Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer. There is plenty of time left for more scandals to reveal themselves though, so we'll see what happens.
South of the border, the Trump Administration has found itself in another major predicament too. This one was a big one and has led to an Impeachment Inquiry. More members of the Trump team left both before and after the news had broke that the President was trying to get dirt on one of his chief political rivals, Joe Biden, from the Ukrainian President. Even the edited transcript released seems to verify this, so we'll be in for a long number of months going forward. We certainly live in interesting times.
Even with all the turmoil listed above, and the attack on a Saudi Arabian oil producing facilities, the Stock Market went up nicely last month. We ended up setting some records on the Toronto Stock Exchange in September. For the first time ever, the TSX hit a level of 16,947. That had the TSX up 18% from the beginning of the year. We've had a dramatic improvement from the ugly last quarter of 2018. As many of you know, I've suggested a little re-balancing over recent months to make sure we're staying balanced.
If you'd like to talk about how any of the above has impacted your portfolio, give me a shout!
Bryce A. Borden