Amazon Inc. Starts operations in Canada by launching a deposit slip

Actions of Amazon.com Inc. They are listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange for the first time since the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce launched a new product for investors.

Early Canadian deposit receipts or CDRs are traded on the Neo Exchange, an additional stock exchange that competes with the Toronto Stock Exchange. They are based on US deposit receipts, which US investors have used for decades to buy shares in foreign companies without trading in currency.

9,668 shares traded at 1pm in Toronto, trading at a moderate level on Amazon CDRs. The price at the time was US $ 22.62; Each CDR represents 0.005% of an Amazon share traded at 60,604.65 in New York.

Elliott Scherr, head of sales at Cibic’s Wealth Solutions Group, said Cipic’s idea was in response to complaints from customers that their U.S. stock earnings had been reduced by the Canadian dollar’s rise.

“The S&P 500 is up all this time, and Canadians are not seeing that big boost in terms of the Canadian dollar,” Screer said.

Last year, the S&P 500’s 16.3% increase was offset by a 14.4% decline in the Canadian dollar. In 2019, a strong Canadian dollar cut the U.S. equity benchmark 28.9% gain by more than six percentage points.

Canadian deposit receipts are designed to allow investors to buy overseas stocks in Looney Tunes. There is a built-in hedge where the investor’s return is based on the performance of the stock, regardless of the movements in the exchange rate.

The initial goal of the product is for retail investors to manage their own portfolios and “there is no easy way” to prevent monetary risks, Screer said. However, the CBC also aims to bang with investment advisers, he said.

CBC and Neo Exchange plan to issue CDRs to Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc., Tesla Inc. and Netflix Inc. soon, the companies said in a statement.