Pension Pulse

Brian Evans and Hakyung Kim of CNBC report stocks close higher Friday, Nasdaq notches best quarter since 2020:  Stocks rose Friday as Wall Street wrapped up a volatile, but winning quarter that saw more Federal Reserve rate tightening and a mini-financial panic spurred on by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The S&P 500 added 1.44% to close at 4,109.31, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.74% to end at 12,221.91. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 415.12 points, or 1.26%, closing at 33,274.15. The market got a boost Friday after the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge showed a cooler-than-expected increase in prices. The core Personal Consumption Expenditures index , which excludes energy and food costs, rose 0.3% in February, less than the 0.4% expected by economists polled by Dow Jones. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were up 7.03% and 16.77%, respectively, for the first quarter. It was the best quarter since 2020 for the tech-heavy Nasdaq. The Dow ended the period with a

Layan Odeh of Bloomberg reports Ontario Teachers' aims to turn cow waste into profit with $250-million Sevana deal: OntarioTeachers Pension Plan will buy a majority stake in a U.S. company that produces renewable natural gas from cow waste. The pension plan will make a capital commitment of US$250 million to the firm, Sevana Bioenergy LLC, to finance renewable gas projects across North America, according to a statement Tuesday. Renewable natural gas, or RNG, is mostly made of methane, a potent contributor to climate change that’s typically released from the decomposition of organic material in farms and landfills. Sevana captures and processes it to generate energy that has a lower overall climate impact than if methane was allowed to simply vent into the atmosphere. Renewable natural gas is used by utilities and, in some cases, to fuel commercial vehicles that are powered by natural gas. Energy producers including BP PLC and Shell PLC have made big-ticket investments

Mark Wiseman, chair of Alberta Investment Management Corp.’s board of directors, published a comment in the Globe and Mail on why Canada’s productivity weakness has a greater impact than most believe: When Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled her budget last year, Canada’s growth prospects were identified as a significant vulnerability and priority for the government. She sensibly recognized human capital and the green transition as the first two of three “pillars” required to tackle the problem, then identified the third as the “Achilles heel of the Canadian economy” – poor productivity. Having recently torn my Achilles tendon, I can tell you the sharp, sudden pain experienced is quite unlike the slow, creeping problem that productivity growth has become in Canada. This is not an issue that suddenly emerged, rather it has sunk intrinsically into the fabric of our commercial activity and eroded Canada’s appetite for innovation. Compared to peer countries, our productiv