National Bank profit falls on hit from energy sector; boosts dividend + MORE Jun 1st

U.S. stocks moved lower in early trading Wednesday, echoing a slide in global markets as investors weighed a batch of discouraging economic data out of China. Energy companies were among the biggest decliners as the price of oil fell.
KEEPING SCORE: The Dow Jones industrial average fell 64 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 17,722 as of 10:08 a.m. Eastern time. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index shed four points, or 0.2 per cent, to 2,092. The Nasdaq composite index lost six points, or 0.1 per cent, to 4,941.
SWEATIN’IT: Under Armour slumped 6.2 per cent after the sports apparel maker slashed its full-year revenue guidance, saying that the closure of Sports Authority stores will hurt its sales. A bankruptcy court recently decided to approve the liquidation of privately held Sports Authority, which sold Under Armour goods, rather than a restructuring or sale. Under Armour shed $2.17 to $32.80.
DRILLED: Several oil and gas drilling companies fell. Transocean slid 41 cents, or 4.2 per cent, to $9…

WASHINGTON – The impact of low oil prices has continued to hobble the finances of U.S. banks, which posted increased loan losses in the first quarter driven by a huge jump in delinquent energy loans.
U.S. bank earnings dipped 2 per cent in the first three months of the year to $39.1 billion from $39.8 billion a year earlier, data issued Wednesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. showed.
Banks posted the biggest quarterly increase — 65.1 per cent — in commercial and industrial loans that are 90 days or more past due since the first quarter of 1987. A large portion of the problem loans came in the energy sector, where low oil prices hurt oil and gas producers and made it harder for them to repay their loans.
Big banks were most affected.
Much of the exposure to energy loans sits with the big Wall Street banks, which made billions of dollars in loans during the boom to finance oil production in Texas, North Dakota and elsewhere. The six largest U.S. banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — have billions of dollars of exposure to energy loans that won’t all be paid back…

The smallest of Canada’s six big banks had announced in May that it would set aside $250-million to cover bad loans to the sector

WASHINGTON – Newly released documents about a now-defunct business owned by Donald Trump reveal strategies for enticing people to enrol in real estate seminars even if they couldn’t afford it, opening the presumptive Republican nominee up to fresh criticism from Hillary Clinton that he took advantage of vulnerable Americans.
“Trump University was a fraudulent scheme used to prey upon those who could least afford it,” Clinton’s campaign wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning.
Clinton aides suggested the likely Democratic nominee would use Trump University as part of a broader effort to cast Trump as a callous businessman who promises Americans ways to get ahead, but is only concerned with enriching himself. As part of that effort, Clinton has previously hammered Trump for appearing to cheer for the collapse of the U.S. housing market and for failing to make good on pledges to donate to veterans until he was pressured to follow through by the media.
“He is pitching voters that he can help improve their lives, but it is all a scam whose only goal is to promote Trump,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said…

Ian Nelson, 37, Toronto (Photograph by Roberto Caruso)
The Problem
Ian Nelson is a 37-year-old married father of two from Toronto who has spent the last several years paying off the mortgage on his $750,000 home and adding to his retirement savings. Right now, he has a six-figure portfolio invested solely in RRSPs that includes several Canadian stocks as well as three mutual funds, a handful of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), GICs and $16,000 in cash. Now, he’s looking for a well-diversified portfolio that’s low-cost and low-maintenance. “I invest $5,500 quarterly into RRSPs and expect to do this until retirement at age 55. I want to simply buy and hold.”
It’s no small feat to create a low-fee portfolio that doesn’t require annual rebalancing, says Miles Clyne, a portfolio manager with the Tycuda Group at MacDougall Investment Counsel Inc., in Langley, B.C. “But it can be done.”
The Fix
To get the asset allocation and diversification Nelson needs, Clyne recommends that he build his portfolio using two of the four ETFs that make up the iShares Portfolio Builders series of funds: the Conservative Core fund (XCR) and the Global Completion fund (XGC)…