The first full week of September begins with investors keeping one eye their gains of the previous week along with the seemingly increased stream of positive economic numbers while keeping one eye on unsettling events in Syria.

Further signs that confidence is being regained in the European economy came from Goldman Sachs on Monday, September 9^th, when the giant financial house reported that U.S. investors injected a 36-year high US$65-billion into European equities during the first 6-months of this year.

Canada’s Finance minister, Jim Flaherty threw the masses a bit of a bone when he announced that the federal government was freezing current unemployment insurance premiums for the next three years.

Gabriel Resources (GBU-T) took another direct shot to the chin and the price of its stock plunged by some 72% to an intraday low of just $0.41on word that the Romanian Parliament may be halting further debate as to the fate of the company’s Rosia Mountain Project and if it will ever get the required permitting to move the beleaguered gold property ahead.

The DJIA has its best day in 5-weeks when some sanity came into the Syrian debate and America’s senior exchange moved up by 134-points to once again cross above 15,000 to end the day at 15,060.

Overseas, the Chinese market advanced on figures that showed their country’s exports rose in August at a better than expected rate, while Tokyo markets advanced on word the city had been awarded the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

The Dow Jones Industrials made the biggest changes in 10-years to its thirty company lineup on Tuesday, September 10^th, when it told Alcoa Inc. (AA-N), Bank of America Corp. (BAC-N), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ-N) that they were being dropped from the senior exchange, while telling Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS-N), Nike Inc. (NKE-N) and Visa Inc. (V-N) that they were in as of September 23^rd.

Another encouraging economic report came out of China when their National Bureau of Statistics reported that factory production rose by a 17-month high in August and is now 10.4% higher than the same month one year ago.

There’s an old adage about ‘selling into strength’, and that’s just what the Canadian government did when it sold about $1.1-billion of General Motors (GM-T) stock to reduce its holdings in the auto giant by about 21% to about 110-million shares of a position it was forced to purchase during the financial collapse and bailout of 2008-09.

And while the Dow earlier had its best day in 5-weeks, the NASDAQ took it one step better on Tuesday, September 10^th, by gaining 18-points to close at a new 13-year high of 3,729.

When your products are as closely watched as those of Apple Inc. (AAPL-Q) you’re going to hit the odd bump in the road such as on Wednesday, September 11^th, when the world’s largest tech company’s shares took a 5.42% hit to US$467.83 when the ‘street’ determined that their new iPhone 5C wasn’t a ‘game changer’.

Under the heading of ‘A Dollar Here And A Dollar There’ – Canadian discount store Dollarama Inc. (DOL-T) shares’ jump by over 7% to $79.94 when the dollar store solidly beat the street with its 2^nd quarter financials.

American telecom giant, Verison Communications (VZ-N) announced it will float a record US$49-billion (yes – billion) bond issue to help pay for their recent      US$130-billion purchase of Vodafone’s (VOD-N) 45% stake in their Verizon Wireless network.

Twitter Inc. got the talking heads all a twitter when the short-form communicator announced they were contemplating an initial public offering (IPO) of stock to take their company public.

Under our continuing heading of ‘Good News – Bad News’ – The good news for most Canadians was that they were a little bit richer on Friday, September 13^th after Statistics Canada reported their average net worth grew by $5,500 in the 2ndquarter to $207,300 per person. The bad news was that they borrowed an additional $25.9-billion and increased their ratio of household debt to disposable income by another 1.3% to a record 163.4% in order to achieve this.

Consumer stocks such as Canadian Tire Corp. (CTC.A-T) at $92.78, Dollarama Inc. (DOL-T) at $81.07 and IMAX Corp. (IMX-T) at $30.28 continued to lead the TSX Composite higher with new 52-week trading highs, while resource stocks continued to be a drag with Aurico Gold (AUO-T) at $3.85, Niko Resources (NKO-T) at $3.34 and Timmons Gold (TMM-T) at $1.73 all hitting new 52-week lows.

For the Week – The Dow Industrials gained an impressive 3.04% to 15,376, while the S&P 500 Index gained 1.98% to 1,688 and the NASDAQ improved by 1.69% to 3,722. To the Indian Summer north, the TSX Composite Index gave back 0.76% to end the week at 12,723 and the TSX Venture Exchange lost 1.41% to 942.

The Canadian dollar gained 0.60% to end the week at US$0.9663.

Gold bullion fell by 4.74% to $1,323.60 and crude oil lost 3.58% to $106.25. The CRB Commodities Index eased by 1.03-points to end the week at 291.02.

And Finally – As you strive to keep your financial affairs in order, you may be interested in a recent Wealth-X survey that found that the number of the world’s ‘mega-rich’ people, (those with a net worth of at least US$30-million), has grown this year to a record 199,235 individuals with a combined fortune of about    US$28-trillion.

Warren Buffet – “You only have to get rich once. That seems pretty fundamental.”