The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) plunged 160.42 points or 1.13% to 14,092 as all 10 market sub-indexes fell March 7. The Dow Jones Index fell 0.66% to 12,090 and the Nasdaq fell 1.4% to 2746.
Analysts were quick to credit continuing violence and the prospect of a civil war in Libya and fears that higher oil prices could stall the global economic recovery.
But it takes more than that to rattle Canaccord Financial Inc. (TSX:CF) chairman Peter Brown.
“The market’s been pretty good, but there’s a wall of worry out there all right,” Brown told Business in Vancouver March 7.
Brown and a partner bought what became Canaccord for $23,000 in 1968. He then guided the Vancouver-based investment brokerage company’s growth to $577 million in revenue in the year that ended March 31, 2010.
He sounded as confident about the markets as he did in December, when BIV last chatted with him about the state of the markets.
“The credit problems are still there and are pretty severe, but things are improving slowly. In the U.S. things look a little better. My biggest worry is the credit problems,” Brown said in December. (See “TSX experiences best close since 2008 ” – December 22, 2010; BIV Business Today.)
Back then, Brown was predicting “long, slow growth.”
Yesterday, he shucked off the bad day by saying, “I’m a humble stock broker. I don’t know what the market does day to day.”