Empire Company (EMP)

 What are we looking for?

We are in the traditional Santa Claus rally season when stocks tend to rally after tax-loss selling abates.

Since beaten-down shares are prime candidates for a Santa rebound, today we are looking for the 15 top ranked INK Edge names that have the worst price performance. While there is no guarantee that the Grinch won’t steal the show and send stocks lower, today we assume that Santa will arrive on schedule.

What are we looking for?

The Trudeau government was elected on a platform that included more infrastructure investment, tax benefits for middle- and lower-income Canadians as well as improved employment insurance benefits. We are looking for stocks that might benefit from these commitments, notably construction, engineering and retail-oriented names. Rankings are determined by the INK Edge V.I.P. criteria (valuations, insider commitment and price momentum). This is the same approach we apply across the broad market to determine membership for the INK Canadian insider index, which is used by the Horizons Canadian Insider Index ETF (HII).

What are we looking for?

We are halfway to the next semi-annual rebalancing of the INK Canadian Insider Index, which will be implemented on Nov. 20. Today, we look for the stocks that are leading candidates for inclusion in the 50-stock index used by the Horizons Canadian Insider Index ETF (HII). A stock already in the index before rebalancing date stays so long as it is in the top 30 per cent of all stocks ranked on the basis of the INK Edge V.I.P. criteria (valuations, insider commitment, price momentum). We replace index drop-outs with the top ranked V.I.P. stocks which are not already index members. To identify where insiders see the best opportunities right now, we focus on the top 15 INK Edge ranked TSX stocks.

July 29, 2015 - Today we revisit Alimentation Couche-Tarde (ATD) which we last featured in our morning report on October 16th. On that day it closed at $35.25 and it is up 63.3% since then, closing at $57.56 on July 28th (and setting a new 52-week high of $58.75 on July 20th along the way). There has been some recent insider selling from the CEO and CFO which is something to keep an eye on, but at this point it may be nothing more than clearing the decks for more option grants.

Alimentation Couche-Tarde is ranked tenth on the July edition of our INK Edge Top 40 on the equally weighted basis of valuations, insider commitment and price momentum. This is up thirty spots from its rank in the June edition of the list, and it appears to be the beneficiary of the trend that has seen other grocery type companies like Empire Company (INK Edge Outlook: sunny; EMP) and George Weston (INK Edge Outlook: sunny; WN) added to this month's edition of the list.