US housing starts fall in notably cold and snowy January + MORE Feb 17th

MONTREAL – Air Canada is reporting strong financial results, including a record high for adjusted annual profit for the second year in a row.
The airline’s adjusted net income for 2015 was $1.2 billion — more than double the previous record of $531 million in 2014.
The adjusted earnings provided by Air Canada (TSX:AC) are more closely watched by analysts than net income, which includes items required under generally accepted accounting principles.
The company’s adjusted net income for the full year equalled $4.18 per diluted share, including 40 cents in the fourth quarter.
Analysts had estimated adjusted earnings of 40 cents per share for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Overall operating revenue in the quarter was $3.18 billion, up $78 million from a year earlier. That included $2.836 billion in system passenger revenue, up $81 million.
Traffic growth of 8.6 per cent in the fourth quarter reflected traffic increases in all of Air Canada’s five geographic markets…

WASHINGTON – Cold winter weather appears to have cut into homebuilding in the Midwest and Northeast, causing the pace of construction to tumble in January.
Housing starts slipped 3.8 per cent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.1 million homes, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. A sharp 12.8 per cent decline in construction in the Midwest and a 3.7 dip in the Northeast propelled the broader decrease, with construction also falling in the South. It was nearly unchanged in the West.
The setback occurs after months of improvement for the real estate market. For all of 2015, builders broke ground on 1.1 million properties, the most since 2007 when the housing bubble was beginning to burst into a broader recession.
“Seasonal weather and the recent uncertainty in the stock market are likely explanations for the decline in January housing starts,” said Bill Banfield, vice-president of mortgage provider Quicken Loans. “Taking a step back to look at year-over-year growth, we continue to see healthy and steady gains…

In my last post I shared some insights from Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense, which argues that investors are generally better off keeping their portfolios simple and straightforward. This idea has little appeal for index investors who hope to improve on plain-vanilla funds by using so-called smart beta strategies.
“Smart beta” refers to any rules-based strategy that attempts to outperform traditional cap-weighted index funds. Now more than a decade old, fundamental indexing is the granddaddy of smart beta, while factor-based strategies are the newer kids on the block. In each case, the goal is to build a diversified fund that gives more weight to stocks with certain characteristics (value, small-cap, momentum, and so on) that have delivered higher returns than the broad market over the long term.
Many proponents of passive investing see huge potential in factor-based strategies because they combine the best features of indexing—low-cost, broad diversification, and a rules-based process—with the potential to overcome the shortcomings of traditional cap-weighting …

Devon Energy will lay off 20 per cent of its staff in the first quarter of the year, the company says, but it’s not yet clear how many cuts will take place in Alberta.