Toronto, Ontario — In this week’s Tuesday Ticker, Atlantic Canada’s Steele Auto Group forges ahead with U.S. expansions, Canadian drivers make consider some seedy financial choices amid the pandemic and Tesla joins the S&P Index as one of the U.S.’s 500 largest publicly traded companies.
Step up for Steele
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia-based Steele Auto Group has been forging ahead with its U.S. expansions, even in the face of nationwide slumps and a surge in COVID-19 cases across North America.
The group announced last week that it had secured the purchase of a Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge-Ram dealership in Lockhart, Texas, and another facility in Gonzales, Texas. The stores are about 55 kilometres apart, said the company, while both are approximately the same distance from Austin, Texas and 11.5 km from San Antonio.
Steele purchased the facilities from the Benny Boyd Auto Group, upping its tally of Texas stores to three. Steele purchased its first U.S. store—located in Luling, Texas—in February 2020.
Looming loans
A recent report analyzing the internet search trends of Canadians suggests that a number of drivers are considering some seedy financial options, according to observers.
The number of searches involving car title loans has almost tripled in Canada in the March-to-September period this year to nearly 17,000 per month, compared with about 5,900 searches per month in the same time period a year earlier, according to SEMrush.
The Boston, Massachusetts, based marketing firm that studies Internet search trends said Canadian searches for payday loans, meanwhile, fell by 43 percent to 22,900 from 39,700 during the same period, which was marked by millions of people losing their jobs as non-essential stores and industries were forced to close in an effort to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
“The most surprising thing we noticed was an increase in search demand for car title loans which is, I think, quite unique for Canada compared to the United States, where we didn’t see this type of increase,” said Eugene Levin, chief strategy officer for SEMrush.
He said he doesn’t know why U.S. searches didn’t also rise but suggested a possible explanation for the increase in searches for car title loans and a corresponding drop in payday loans in Canada could be that the potential applicants have a car, but no job.
A car title loan works on the same basis as a home equity loan. They are billed as short term affairs, secured by a lien on the vehicle. In the event of nonpayment or default by the borrower, the lender can repossess the vehicle in order to recoup their money.
Tesla at the top
Tesla is set to join the S&P 500 (Standard and Poor 500) at the close this Friday, while S&P Dow Jones Indices said it will be removing Apartment Investment and Management Co. from its benchmark index to make way for the EV automaker.
S&P Dow Jones Indices previously announced on Nov. 16 that Tesla would join the S&P 500. Tesla’s size — it’s the largest company ever to be added to the benchmark index — prompted the index provider to seek feedback from the investment community over whether to add Tesla all at once or in two separate tranches.
Tesla will also be added to the S&P 100, replacing Occidental Petroleum Corp., S&P said on Friday. Occidental will remain in the S&P 500, and Apartment Income REIT Corp. will replace Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc. in the S&P MidCap 400 Index.
The S&P Index is a market-capitalization-weighted index of the 500 largest U.S. publicly traded companies. The S&P is a float-weighted index, meaning company market capitalizations are adjusted by the number of shares available for public trading.
