Hiren Amin

[music] >> Hello, I'm Greg Bonnell. Welcome to MoneyTalk Live, brought to you by TD Direct Investing. Every day, I'll be joined by guests from across TD, many of whom you'll only see here. We're going to take you through what's moving the markets and answer your questions about investing. Coming up on today's show, Hiren Amin from TD Direct Investing will be taking your questions about how to use the WebBroker platform. And MoneyTalk's Anthony Okolie is going to take us to the latest Canadian auto sales data and what it says about the health of the economy. So here's how you can get in touch with us. Just email moneytalklive@td.com or fill out the viewer response box under the video player on WebBroker. Before he gets all that, let's get you an update on the market. We will start with the TSX Composite Index. A bit of a down day on both Bay and Wall Street. 20,523, your data hundred and 53 points or three quarters of a percent. Earnings season really ramping up on both sides of the border. The big weight right now seems to be some of the energy names. You have American benchmark crude below the $77 per barrel, a pullback of more than 2% on the session. Names like Cenovus, it which right now is down 2.7% to 23 bucks and change per share. Cameco was getting a bit earlier in their uranium spaces holding onto those gains, at 3537 it's up about 2 1/4 of a percent. South of the border, the earnings are coming fast and furious and the market doesn't seem to be that impressed. At 4101, you're down 35 points, almost a full percent. Some concern out there to about really the economic path forward despite the badger earnings that you're getting what you're looking behind, what lies ahead. Let's take a look at the NASDAQ as well, see how it's faring against the broader market. It is of course the tech heavy index. It is down a little more than 1% right now. And Exxon, some of our energy names under pressure with the price of crude down, same goes for some of the big names in the states. Exxon at hundred and 16 bucks and change down 1.7%. And that's your market update. We are in the thick of earnings season. They keep coming in at a pretty rapid clip and the market reaction has been not all that enthusiastic. It Moneytalk's Anthony Okolie joins us now with a look at some of the dynamics and what's happening out there. >> Yeah, as you mentioned, the earnings so far, markets haven't reacted to positively about that but when you look at the numbers, I mean, we are still early into the game. But three quarters of the companies have topped expectations. It's still pretty good stage, but again, I think markets are still waiting to see what's coming. Of course, this week, we've got the big tech earnings coming along. >> Okay, that's going to be key, right? So part of the discussion I'm seeing out there among investors is, let me see what big tech has in store for us. Did such a strong start to beginning of the year, it almost feels like a show me story now. Like okay, can you justify the big… What is it today? Microsoft? >> We got Microsoft and Alphabet as well reporting. As you mentioned, tech stocks have had some of the best, been some of the best performers this year and made up a big chunk of the S&P 500 index. I think what investors will be looking at is how are these companies managing navigating higher interest rates, high inflation amidst the economic slowdown. We've seen numerous companies have let go of companies since the start of the year. Alphabet I think that about 12000 Jobs in January. So it's a big focus will be how are these companies managing these headwinds as we look ahead? Microsoft, of course, they are reporting their quarter earnings. Investors will be focus on what impact is the slump in PC sales going to have on the Windows software position. Alphabet, as I mentioned, they were generally cut some jobs. They are also in a battle with Microsoft in the AI chatbots base. I think that is one area that investors will be focused on. As you said, it's show me time. Show me the goods. I think that will be the focus this week as the big tech companies start to report earnings. >> Great stuff, importance of to keep your eyes on. Stay tuned, Anthony is going to join us a little later in the show and have an update on the latest Canadian auto sales. In just a moment, we will be joined by Hiren Amin, Senior client education instructor with TD Direct Investing, taking your questions about the WebBroker platform and a reminder of how you can get in touch with us. Just email moneytalklive@td.com or fill out the viewer response box under the video player on WebBroker. Now let's get you update on some of the top stories in the world of business and take a look at how the markets are trading. CN Rail is announcing a new container shipping service, connecting its network with railways in the United States and Mexico. The Falcon Premium service is an agreement between CN, Union Pacific and Mexico's GMXT and it aims to when shipping contracts away from the trucking industry. Interesting to see this in the wake of competitor CP rails combination with Kansas City Southern. Of course, that created a railway spanning those three countries as well. Right now, you got CN, which actually had a solid earnings story for us as well, dow about 3 1/3%. Got some concerns out there about the path forward. Got General Motors ending production of its Chevy Bolt electric vehicle models. The Detroit automakers have production will cease by the end of this year. It is pointing to its older battery technology in those cars. The plan currently producing the bowls will be retooled for electric truck production using their new battery technology. You got the maker Post-it Notes and respirator masks is announcing job cuts in the face of weakening demand. That would be 3M. Says he plans to lay off 6000 workers in an effort to cut costs by up to $900 million. The announcement comes as 3M reports and almost 5% decline in organic sales. You see the stock right now pretty much flat. A quick check in on the market. We'll start with the main benchmark index your own Bay Street with the TSX Composite Index. You're done hundred and 53 points will call that, three quarters of a percent. And south of the border, the S&P 500 at this hour also in negative territory, down 35 points, almost a full percent. As promised, joining us now to take your questions about how to better utilize the WebBroker platform is Hiren Amin, Senior client education instructor with TD Direct Investing. Great to have you on the show. Viewers know you from your shorter segments from time to time. now we are one hand things over to you for the full duration of the show. Really looking forward to it. >> Absolutely, Greg. It's a pleasure to be here again and looking forward to enjoying the rest of the show with you. >> Okay. That was the nice stuff. Now we are going to start throwing questions that you to answer so it's time to get into it. Someone wants to know if you can shed some light on some of the jargon they are hearing when they read about the markets. The Bears, the bulls, etc. Let's go through it all. >> Yeah, absolutely. You know what, when you join the investing world, it's quite a zoo out there, to say the least. There are a lot of animals that are described when referencing the ongoing's of the market and we are going to go through some of them. There's quite an exhaustive list. let's talk about the bulls and bears, as you mention, Greg, to start off. These are the most common ones that most people have already heard of. If you've ever seen an image of Wall Street, you've probably seen the bold that's charging on Wall Street. So what does this mean? Here is the just. Bull is used as a reference to the way that they attacked. They attack with their horns up and that's why that name is given. Bears, on the other hand, attack with their paws downward. So in essence what they are describing, the direction of their attack it describes the way that the markets are moving. So bull market is considered to be when optimism is high and generally prices are going to be rising. Contrary to that, a bear market meanwhile applies when sort of pessimism is running high and your seeing prices declining. These are two general terms given to markets but they may be attribute it to investors in their outlook on particular stocks, if they are focusing on whether they are bullish or bearish. I did mention it's his view and we are talking about animals, but actually we cannot forget some of our more feathery friends out there. This next one is probably one that's come into the spotlight a little bit more given the recentclimate that was had over the past year with interest rates and this has to do with our feathery friends called doves and hawks. So our two winged friends, and you have probably recently taken flight and you hear more about them from when you hear central bankers or the central banks, the Fed in the US and the Central Bank of Canada here, talk about interest rates. So if you hear about a central banker taking on a dovish tone, that generally means they are more pessimistic about economic growthand they may be considering cutting interest rates. This is what analysts and most investors pay attention to, do they have a dovish or hawkish tone? If they've a hawkish tone, central bankers are generally optimistic about the economy and growth prospects. But they are worried about inflation. And that's kind of been the recurring theme over the past year. And so in this case, a hawkish tone could include forecasts for interest-rate hikes as a way to keep that in check. Now to more feathery friends, actually we are going to continue that, another one you might hear is about an ostrich. This is more of a less common one. But Greg, what do you think about when you hear or think of the term ostrich as it relates to finance? Any guesses? > Something about sticking your head in the sand, is trying to ignore was right in front of your eyes? >> You got it exactly. Head in the sand. That's exactly what it is. The ostrich effect is used to describe investors who tend to ignore that tumbling stock market or tough financial situations. They would much rather stick their head in the sand so to speak to avoid these big declines in their portfolio from having those happen. Now, let's do a final one and this is kind of a timely one, it's known as a Black Swan. No Greg, I have seen swans are white. Have you seen any that are Black? >> I have never seen one in nature. But sometimes, the economy or the markets for a one-hour way. > Yeah, exactly. They actually do exist. They are relatively rare, and that's exactly why it's used to describe certain market events. They are named after them, Black Swan events. So in the financial world, what this refers to is really those unpredictable, massively transformative events that can really shape the world and the finance markets as well and a prime example is what most of us have lived through it and that's the COVID 19 pandemic, which is marked as a Black Swan event. Greg, there you have it. He did a quick rundown of some of our feathery friends and animals as part of the finance world there. >> Our trip to the Wall Street CO2 start of the show. Very illuminating, because it is very confusing. We all had a time when this was new to us and were like, what are people talking about? A nice primer here. Another question now about the platform. Can I contribute to a registered plan with something other than cash? >> Yeah, so quick answer is yes. Most commonly, investors, when it comes to contributing to registered plans, and we refer to registered plans, we are talking about RSP RESP, TFSA accounts, etc. so most commonly, we just inject new cash into a, whether it be from an external source, bank account or perhaps if you have a nonregistered account like a margin or cash account, you would move it over. But the less common way that you can do it as well is actually doing it with securities in kind. And what this exactly means is, perhaps let's say you have an account where you have a portfolio of stocks or any security for that matter a fact, whether that can be mutual funds, bonds, GICs, etc. So as long as it is eligible to be held in the registered account, you are in fact able to contribute that into the plan. I will quickly take you through how it investor can do that. Once you have logged into WebBroker, you can head over to the accounts tab which is the first one up there, and within the middle column under transfers and withdrawal, we can go to a section that says, transfer securities within TD Direct Investing, including contributions. So we would click on them. Now, in our case, we are using a demo account to be don't quite have securities here but you would choose the accounts that you would have, and this would generally be coming from a nonregistered account such as a cash or margin account, and then you would choose the account that you want to contribute to. Again, that would be in RSP, TFSA, etc. On the next screen, what it will prompt you to do is to choose the investment you would like to contribute. You can pick a stock, bond, mutual fund, whatever you have in your portfolio that you are looking to contribute. Another way that the valuation works, which is thequestion a lot of people may have, is if I'm able to contribute 5500 in my TFSA, how do I do that within an investment? How do I figure out that value? When it comes to stocks and ETFs, what they will do generally is take the currently traded price, the last traded price on it, and multiplied by the number of shares to get you closest to the contribution room and that's how it will work. Now it may be a few dollars might be remaining in that case you might just have to transfer those as cash if you really want to get that full topic. But in short, you can do this. This is going to happen as soon as you do it. It will happen almost in real time or I should say the next business day and you will see the security show up in your registered account at that point there. And keep in mind, you can also do this for US stocks as well that go into a registered plan. The one sort of additional piece to that when it comes to valuation is that they have to add the current exchange rate to be able to get the valuation when you are contributing US securities to register plans there. >> Alright, very useful and hopeful information. Let's get to another question, but left coming in for hearing. How can I find information about money market funds? Before this year, I don't remember people asking questions about money market funds at all. >> Yeah, and for good reason. There was no reason for investors to even look towards those kinds of products but now it's kind of been a theme. So money markets, just give a quick primer on what they are, these are structured as mutual fundsand they are the securities that invest in high quality debt that is issued from the governments of Canada and any provincial body government, usually chartered banks or highly rated commercial paper. And so they are essentially almost like a savings vehicle if you want to think of it that way, but they are investing in these short-term debt instruments. And they do capture a little bit of interest and usually competitive interest, especially with the climate that we are in. And so the way that you can sort of look for them as we are going to start with our research Over here. There is a quick way you can access this. Underinvestment, we are going to go to the mutual funds section here which is where they are going to be categorized under. Now once you are under the mutual funds, there is actually these categories which they are broken down into and you can see that there are two categories, Canadian money market and US money market funds here. Now we're just going to pick out Canadian markets as generally most investors will have Canadian cash so we will select that and click on that hyperlink. This will take us all the money market funds that are available for purchase through direct investing here. And you can see the list over here. Now, the investor can now decide from using these different sort of criteria, if they want to do a further filter or search from them, but I'm just going to really pick it based on the MorningStar rating system. So let's go ahead and pick let's say for example the second one from the list. If you are interested in purchasing this or you want to know exactly what the yield is, this is the step you have to take. You would actually have to click on it and almost prompt a trade. So we are going to go ahead and click buy on this money market fund here. Now once you click on that, it's going to bring you to a little bit more detailed information regarding the fund itself, and the important thing is that investors want to look at is the yield rate here. So this money market currently yields at 4.54% there. And this is the net asset value, so $10 a unit is how you want to think of it. You can go ahead and pretty much fit in the next parameters as it explains. So because it's structured as mutual fund, you are able to put in full dollar amounts when you want to invest in it or you can just do it based on units, how many units you want to buy and those units, remember, or $10 a piece there. Then, the trader has the option of whether they want to get the dividend or distribution reinvested back in, so if he gets paid out it goes back right in and sort of compounds for you, having their compounding growth, or you can choose to have it paid out his cash if you are someone who is looking for income investments and subsists on living on those income, then you just have it paid out as cash so you withdraw. So once he got those parameters in, you can send the order through if you are happy with this particular money market fund there. So this is the way you would look at them so keep in mind, folks, make sure to click on them if you want to check the yield on those money markets there. >>okay, very interesting set. As always, make sure you do your own research before making any investment decisions. were going to get your questions about the web broker platform for Hiren Amin in just a moment time. Or minor, course, you can have with us at any time. Do you have a question about investing or what's driving the markets? Our guests are eager to hear what's on your mind, so send us your questions. There are two ways you can get in touch with us. You can send us an email anytime at moneytalklive@td.com or you can use the question box right below the screen here on WebBroker. Just write in your question and hit send. We'll see if one of our guests can get you the answer right here at MoneyTalk Live. all right, we are back with Hiren Amin, we are takingyour questions. Look at the window. Where can I see more data about GICs on the fly from? >> Absolutely. We are going to be harping on that same theme. We have seen a big shift and a lot of investors looking at fixed income products and GIC is where that fits under, fixed income. For those of you not aware, GIC is much like a savings bank account and so you be putting your money in there but the one caveat to a GIC is that you have a lock in terms of the GIC. Yet the lock in your money where is in a savings bank account, you are able to freely take out your money as you will. But to be able to find the information on GICs, we are first going to head over to our research have begun. Underinvestment, it's already categorized. We see a link at the bottom that says GIC Rate Sheet. So once you bring up the rate sheet, and by the way, the right to see publisher going to be updated on a daily basis, so sometimes during after hours or premarket opens, you might not see the race at this point yet. They are only available during regular market hours. Just keep that in mind. But when you land on the GIC page, you can see that they are kind of broken down into various terms that you are able to choose. So there short-term which is going to be those that are a year or less until an investor can choose any sort of terms that they have. And remember, the longer the commitment you have, usually in the interest rates will kind of reflect that. You have more attractive interest rates if you are going to a longer term, and there. If we go to the long-term grouping here, these are going to be from the 1 to 5 year span here. It's already organized based on the highest annual interest rates that are available there. No one thing that's curious, Greg, you might see investors questioning about is why am I seeing a monthly interest rate, a semiannual interest rate and an annual one there? This hasto do with the way the interest rate gets paid out with the GIC. For instance, the investor wants to have the interest paid out at the end of that one year term, then you would just choose annual period than semiannual would mean that it gets paid at the halfway mark and then monthly would mean that the interest is being paid monthly. You can see there is going to be a little bit of a reduction in the basis points or the interest you're going to get as part of doing that. So to be able to go ahead then and make that purchase, you simply select, first of all, the kind of interest that you want based on the security you're looking at. So the first one we are going to be here, I'm going to click on that. It's already going to preload up and give me some other information. The main other thing and investor wants to be concerned and with the GIC is that there are certain minimums and you'll be able to see that on that rate sheet when you bring up the trade to get as you have now. Then you simply plug in the amount you want to invest. Let's just say we do the minimum. You plug in the dollar amount is what you have to put in with GICs. And then you simply send the order through there. And so this will then go ahead and purchase the GIC. You will see the GIC show up in your portfolio and then for one, pretty much your funds are locked. And upon maturity, one year from now, so in other words 25 April 2024, you would have the principal returned back to you, which would be $1000, and then you would have that annual interest being paid to you. One of the thing to mention is well with GICs that are similar to a savings account is that they are going to be CDIC insured for up to $100,000 per issuer. So if you make a mix of these different issuers that you are purchasing, you're going to get the coverage for hundred thousand apiece from each of those. > I'm going at the top bar and perhaps viewers have been intrigued to where they see a tab that says cashable. >> Yes. >> There are certain caveats, I guess, with the cashable GIC. It gives you a more flex ability as regards access to your money but I imagine it's different than the locked-in one. >> Yes. This is for those who want a bit more flex ability paid their structured a little bit differently in terms of the terms. It's usually going to be one and for your terms that they have to them. The rates are going to be reflective of that because it's considered an almost liquid product, the investor has a choice. Now there are terms we won't really go into but depending on when you cash out, there may be certain tiers of interest rates that you're going to get depending on how soon you cash out. So if you're buying, let's say, a three-year cashable GIC and you decide to cash out a month or two months into the full year term,chances are you're probably not gonna get that full interest rate term there. But if this is something of interest to you and you know you want the flexibility, then this is certainly somethingthat investors can look at which gifts and that opportunity where they can use catchable ones as well. >> A great starting point for our audience if they are interested in GICs. Got another question here for you, Hiren. are there any tools to help a new investor who is just starting out? >>oh, I love this one, Greg. At direct investing, we pride ourselves because one of our core mandates is making sure we have the tools and resources to really provide education to our investors. so self-directed investing. Especially because we have so many people who are getting into the space from the traditional kind of managed investing world. So for our investors who are kind of new and wanting to learn more about investing or fine tune it, the way I would tell you to start is simply first by clicking this tab. We have a tab dedicated to all of our educational resources. If you click on the learn tab, this is going to load upour education page over here. And it should be coming up in just a moment here. There we go. So in our Learning Center, we have categorized kind of three different streams of learning avenues you have, so to speak. So you have these Nvidia lessons, these are the short soundbites or video bites if you want to call it that. They really hone in on specific topics related to investing. They range anywhere from about 4:58 or six minutes. You can really watch this on the go if you have the mobile app, you can login and check it out. So really accessible there. The other stream we have is master classes. This is live, instructor led classes we run every day. We usually have 3 to 4 classes happening every day and I'm just going to take you into that just from among for viewers who want to see it. If you click on it, you're gonna see what classes are running and your gonna see which of my colleagues are on the roster. You will see the title and discussion of what the classes are and exactly what time they will be running. these classes all run for an hour. So if you do have bad time, it's worth it especially because you do get that interactivity, you get to talk to the instructor and ask questions and learn in a group setting, if that's something you prefer. That's something I would definitely encourage everyone to check out. Finally, I want to go back and cover the last stream which is our webinars. These are going to be the use one hours sort of shows that we put on where we invite industry experts and subject matter experts on various topics how we are covering you and we do a question-and-answer period with them. Sorry, this is an interview that happens with them and then the audience has an opportunity to to ask questions to our guest. You can see some that we've had in the past. These are prerecorded ones. The great thing is that if you are not able to attend live, they are available on demand for you to view as well there. And the last thing I want to end with over here on this topic, grade, is finally, if you just didn't want to do the work of kind of searching, there are ways you can filter some content out. You will see there is a filter section here and you can kind of say, look, I'm just interested in knowing about stocks and maybe I just want to kind of focus on learning about may be perhaps also economics. Show me all of that content. And then you can apply the filters and they will take it if it's there. I don't think there's anything in this one but if we go to video lessons, we are going to find, there we go. The filters have already been applied in the video lessons are over here. Let me disclose this box. You can see all of the videos that kind of matchup with those filters that we have. The other thing that you can also do as well, you're doing the filters, you can civilly do a search. If you're interested in learning about bonds, let's get our spelling correct over here, let's do bonds over here and it will give you a prompt to see what you might be interested in learning about and then you can see, how do bonds work? You can click on that and it will bring up this video for you to play to learn about that. That's just a little bit about how you get started on your investing journey and make sure that you're armed with the knowledge to do so. >> Lots of resources there for people who are just getting started on their journey. Let's get another question now. Someone wants to know, what are dividend aristocrats and how can I search for them? >> absolutely. Dividend investing is a core part of a lot of investors portfolios. They seek both the stocks but the added perk is getting dividends with them. So dividend aristocrats is a special kind of category that's come up that really Hallmark certain companies in the way they payout dividends. So what broadly defining what a dividend aristocrat is is companies that have a long history of paying dividends out and not only paying out those dividends but paying it consistently and being able to increase those dividends on a yearly or fairly regular basis. This term, dividend aristocrats, is actually a little bit different the way we kind of categorize in Canada versus stateside, across the border. Just get you started and go over some rules, what's considered to be a dividend aristocrat for us here in Canada, first and foremost, the stock in question has to be part of the Toronto Stock exchange and also part of an index known as the BMI index which generally stands for broad market index. For most of our viewers, you can just related to knowing that it's going to be part of the TSX. The second thing is that these dividend paying companies have to have a history of five years of dividend growth most recently. So they are not only paying these dividends but they are growing or increasing those dividends as well for their shareholders. and then finally the last piece has to do with the market capitalization in the valuation of the company. They have to have a minimum of $300 million or more. in other words, they are in the small-cap category in all words. So being able to search with those criteria, we are going to be looking at using a screener. so we go on to the research page here, under our tools, we are going to head onto our screener section. Now, within our screeners, we want to be able to create a custom screen to be able to build these out. so what I'm going to do here is and when you click on where it says screening right here to bring up that customizability. Now, you might have some filters already added in there when you first load this up so we are going to just remove any old filters that are in there. I'm going to switch on this bulk edit because it's easier for me to edit and add this criterion. Before I start adding my criteria, I want to narrow the search down to the Toronto Stock exchange. Now, we are really focusing on and staying true to what a dividend aristocrat is here. But you can also open it up to the whole Canadian market space versus just the Toronto Stock exchange. Then we're going to add in market capitalization because that's one of the things we look at her talked about. we are also going to go ahead and add in our dividends column, we are going to add in dividend growth rate five-year average. We are going to throw that in. And we are going to throw in one more which is dividend yield. Maybe you want to look for a certain benchmark yield when we are kind of filtering within this category. So what I'm going to start from the bottom and work my way up. So we want to make surethis is set at 300 million or as close as I can get there. And I can probably just key in the rest of the numbers here. There you go. 300 million. That's our small-cap category which is where we are going to be starting out. Now the growth rate, it's up to the investor to choose whatever they feel is appropriate. So we want to have a maximum growth weight all the way there but I'm going to choose an increase in this filter and say maybe a lot, I want positive growth at least let's say 5% or… I think I missed it there. 5% of what we want to see here. There we go. then finally on the dividend side, maybe we are seeing different interest rates based on the climate we are in. maybe we want to just keep in pace with the target inflation or do better than that. So anything that's better than 3% is something that I want to filter for. So benchmark a minimum of 3%. So once you have added this filters and and you can see in the 49 results that are going to show up none of our kind of slow down, we have these companies that are ranked here. Another ranking, of course, if you're wondering, why if one company ranked higher than another in this list, you can hover over it and click on it and it will kind of give youWyatt's ranked number one because of where it fits in the spectrum of these different filters. If you decide you want to do more research on it and you land on a pit, you can obviously just click on the actual company itself and you can either go directly to buying and selling or you can go to the overview page if you want to learn more about what exactly this company is there. So that is, in short, how you can search for dividend aristocrats. I did mention it's a little bit difference in the United States when you are searching for the category. In the US, dividend aristocrats actually have a 25 year history of paying dividends and growth is so that's one thing to look at. They are made up mainly in the S&P 500 benchmark and actually, that's not even the largest category. Greg, Dino with the category of dividend aristocrats is or have you come across a? >> There is something better than a dividend aristocrat? >> There is indeed. Yeah. This one is known as dividend kings, okay? They do take the crown. These companies, in fact, have 50 years of history behind paying dividends and consistent dividends and raising their dividends. There is not a lot of companies in there but there is a tier known as dividend kings. >> I learn something as well. Fascinating stuff. You're going to get back your questions for Hiren Amin on how to better utilize the WebBroker platform in just a moment time. As always, make sure you do your own research before making any investment decisions. and a reminder that you can get in touch with us at any time. Do you have a question about investing or what's driving the markets? Our guests are eager to hear what's on your mind, so send us your questions. There are two ways you can get in touch with us. You can send us an email anytime at moneytalklive@td.com or you can use the question box right below the screen here on WebBroker. Just write in your question and hit send. We'll see if one of our guests can get you the answer right here at MoneyTalk Live. Canadian vehicle sales began 2023 on a strong footing. Recent strength in the job market supported demand. Our Anthony Okolie returns now with the latest sales figures for the first quarter and an Outlook from TD Economics on where he could be headed with auto sales. >> Thanks very much, Greg. As you mentioned, the Canadian auto sector saw strong growth in the first quarter, up nearly 4 1/2% year-over-year. Strengthen the labour market really drove demand there. Outperformance was driven by light truck volume which was up more than 6% year-over-year. That offset 7% year-over-year dropping her volumes. Now the trend saw a shift to higher and vehicle production versus the pre-pandemic trend of consumer preferences. North American auto production is expected to recover gradually as condition continue to improve. TD Economics is forecasting vehicle sales to be up to percent year-over-year. Modest improvement versus the nearly 9% year-over-year increase in North American auto production. And they also expect auto production to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024. Now, as the chart shows, auto price growth has been cooling but it is still elevated. Now, hurting pandemic demand has been a couple of factors. One, higher borrowing costs, higher inflation as well as a run-up in vehicle prices over the past few years. Also, the supply of auto skewing toward higher end models has also been a factor, according to TD Economics be in however, again, the resilient Canadian labour market and strong wage growth has kept sales growth from falling lower. Now, going forward, TD Economics is forecasting Canadian auto sales to recover gradually. As this chart shows, it's looking to some key headwinds such as higher prices, higher interest rates as well as an expected rise in the unemployment rate which will keep a cap on demand for autos this year. Great? Does she mention the fact that those people are buying autos again, there is a relationship obviously with the production of the cars themselves. How is Canada faring compared to the United States and Mexico when it comes to actual production side recovering from the pandemic? >> All three countries did lose some production in the past three years, but the Canadian auto sector of production recovery legged its North American peers. Canada's production of light vehicles in 2022 was down 35% which is nearly 3 times the North American average. When you look at the US, they only saw declines of about 7%. Mexico is twice that of the United States. They saw a 14% reduction during the same period. Now the underperformance in Canada was really due to a raft of divestments in the years leading up to the pandemic, which impacted a number of Canadian production plants, probably here in Ontario. However, a host of investments announced in the past year, including the ramp-up of electric vehicle production, we saw the battery cell investments as well, will hopefully bolster Canada's position within the North American market going forward. >> All right. Interest himself as always. Thanks, Anthony. > My pleasure. >> MoneyTalk Anthony Okolie. Let's check in on the markets right now and see what we have on our hands on Bay Street. The TSX Composite Index has a triple digit loss of 161 points, about three quarters of a percent to the downside. They're selling pressure when it comes to American benchmark crude. It is about 77 bucks a barrel. That's hitting some of the energy names including Canadian Natural Resources. Not too dramatic. At 8089, it's down about 1.12% but is laying on the top line. Take a look at CN Rail, they had a strong quarterly report. They announced a venture to link up with the US Mexican railroad. Their concerns out there about the economic path forward perhaps being reflected in the stock price today. Hundred $62 a share for CN, it's down about 3.7%. Now south of the border, we are awaiting the start of tech earnings season. We are in the thick of earnings season anyway. The banks have shown some things, including McDonald's. McDonald's are very strong quarter. They had an increase in foot traffic despite the raise in prices. People are still seeing value in a McDonald's meal in inflationary times with the overall bracket has been lacklustre during the earnings period. Right now we're down about 40 points in the S&P 500, almost a full percent. How is the NASDAQ stacking up? A little weaker but not too much, about 1% of the downside. And UPS came out as well, talking about weaker consumer demand hitting parcel volumes. UPS getting hit significantly today. I hundred and 77 bucks and change, the stock is down at 9 1/2%. We are back now with Hiren Amin from TD Direct Investing, we are taking your questions about how to better use the platform that we are talking to you through right now so let's get back to them. Hiren, another one for you. How do I research specific market sectors? >> All right, this is one I love as well. there are two approaches you can take. One is top-down analysis when you are looking at market. The top-down analysis approach really looks accredited big picture, the holistic view of the market as a whole. So an investor would 1stgauge macroeconomic factors, satisfy know generally how conditions, economic conditions are in a country so they will be looking at measures like the GDP numbers, gross domestic product and maybe some geopolitical risks if there are any when it comes to what they are treating. But let's hone in a little bit there and say we are focusing on the Canadian market and we feel that there is still some strength there, I want to get to specific sectors, we first come to the research page and go to the markets overview. This page is in fact going to bring us where we can see a little bit about the performance of the sector and that's all you want to start. We click on the sectors have over here. This page is really going to run a number of different comparisons on the sector. At the top, if you are more into that fundamental mindset when you're doing your investing, you can look at comparisons or benchmark where the P/E ratios are of certain sectors and especially if you are looking at specific stocks within the sectors, you can use this chart to deal with those benchmarks to see where they stand. We settled on P/E ratio versus price-to-book ratio. We can see on the spectrum where they are sitting. We can go to industrials and see the ratio of the sector. the PE ratio average and the overall change today as well. One thing to keep in mind as well, investors can do this type of analysis for both the US and Canadian markets in whichever section you are in within this page, you will notice a little switch here, you can switch between the Canadian market. If I just do that in the US markets as well, just keep a note of that if you want to look further. If we scroll down, what I did want to show everyone was kind of the breakdown of the sectors. So we now broadly the sectors represent these overall industries group together which are known as sectors and when you are wanting to do your sector analysis were research, you can first come here and maybe as an investor you want to gauge strength in certain sectors and maybe look at investments within the sectors. so you can benchmark them against different P/E ratios. For example, we can really look at it based on performance, on a one year, one month, etc. But within here, let's focus in on performance and let's say healthcare. Healthcare doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. All of us will, at some point, require their services or use some of their product. So let's go into healthcare over here. So once you step into healthcare, it now gives you a breakdown of the industry or industries within the healthcare sector. Here, you can see all the different industry makeups that you're going to see within that sector itself. Again, you have the standard metrics that you're going to be able to run comparisons in. Let's say we go under the managed healthcare and it's funny, they call it is but it's essentially a term for what we refer to as insurance companies. So this is going to be those insurance companies as part of the healthcare space. So this is one approach to doing it when you are looking purely from the standpoint of potentially fundamentals and also performance. But let's say you also want to do research and find out just generally what's the outlook looking like? What are the growth opportunities in certain sectors and how would I look those up? So you can in fact come into the report section to be able to do that. So within our reports, we have a section in here that's published by MorningStar where they do sector reports. And so you can kind of dive into each one of these. Since we are talking the healthcare, we can simply click on the healthcare report. And once you click on the healthcare report, it will kind of give you… I'm just going to blow this up a little bit, summary… Actually, let me just do this. I think it's opening on a different window so I'm just going to open this healthcare report on this page for everyone. And it'll give you a summary of kind of where the healthcare prospects are, where the growth is looking like, what challenges they may face. So this is giving you the overall picture as well in terms of future projected growth and which industries within that sector are going to be kind of thriving./Just a quick rundown, grade, for you and how you might want to get started in researching specific sectors on the market there. >> Hearing, you are a font of information. We have run out of time for question. We just scratched the surface. Obviously, we will have you back for another full show at some point to get through more of them. Thanks so much for taking a stroll this. >> It was my pleasure, as always. Thank you for having me. >> Our things to Hiren Amin, senior client education instructor TD Direct Investing. Stay tuned for tomorrow show, Hafiz Noordin, portfolio manager with TD Asset Management will be on taking your questions about fixed income. And reminder that you can get a head start on this question. Just a moment he talk live at. On behalf of Anthony and I here on the desk, thanks for watching today and we will see you again tomorrow. [music]