“What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money” — Henny Youngman

*Amazon Headquarters Coming to Vancouver

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that Amazon is expanding its Vancouver tech hub with a new headquarters.

This is expected to bring an additional 3,000 high tech jobs to the city in fields including e-commerce technology, cloud computing, and machine learning.

The new headquarters will be located at the old Canada Post headquarters, at 349 West Georgia Street where Monday’s announcement was made. It is expected to open in 2022.

This is in addition to Amazon’s current Vancouver offices – including its 156,000 square-foot location in TELUS Garden which opened to Amazon employees in 2015. On top of Monday’s announcement, Amazon also confirmed last November its plans to expand into another downtown site on Dunsmuir Street, which will open in 2020.

“Amazon is excited to create 3,000 more highly skilled jobs in Vancouver,” said Alexandre Gagnon, vice-president of Amazon Canada and Mexico. “Vancouver is home to an incredibly talented and diverse workforce, and these thousands of new employees will invent on behalf of our customers worldwide.”

Amazon already employs more than 6,000 people in Canada. It employs more than 1,000 researchers and engineers in Vancouver.

*Note: We are not making a recommendation of any kind. We are simply reporting on a local news story of interest.

WEEKLY MARKET WRAP-UP

North America

• The TSX closed at 15729, up 60 points or 0.38% over the past week. YTD the TSX is down -2.96%.
• The DOW closed at 24263, down -48 points or -0.20% over the past week. YTD the DOW is down -1.84%.
• The S&P closed at 2663, down -7 points or -0.26% over the past week. YTD the S&P is down -0.41%.
• The NASDAQ closed at 7210, up 90 points or 1.26% over the past week. YTD the Nasdaq is up 4.45%.
• Gold closed at 1316, down -13.00 points or -0.68% over the past week. YTD gold is up 0.46%.
• Oil closed at 69.75, up 1.72 points or 2.53% over the past week. YTD oil is up 15.44%.
• The USD/CAD closed at 0.78, up 0.0016 points or 0.21% over the past week. YTD the USD/CAD is down -1.92%.

Europe/Asia

• The MSCI closed at 2071, down -21 points or -1.00% over the past week. YTD the MSCI is down -1.52%.
• The Euro Stoxx 50 closed at 3551, up 32 points or 0.91% over the past week. YTD the Euro Stoxx 50 is up 1.34%.
• The FTSE closed at 7567, up 65 points or 0.87% over the past week. YTD the FTSE is down -1.57%.
• The CAC closed at 5516, up 33 points or 0.60% over the past week. YTD the CAC is up 3.82%.
• DAX closed at 12820, up 239.00 points or 1.90% over the past week. YTD DAX is down -0.76%.
• Nikkei closed at 22473, up 5.00 points or 0.02% over the past week. YTD Nikkei is down -1.28%.
• The Shanghai closed at 3091, up 9.0000 points or 0.29% over the past week. YTD the Shanghai is down -6.53%.
• The Shanghai closed at 3082, up 10.0000 points or 0.33% over the past week. YTD the Shanghai is down -6.80%.

Fixed Income

• The 10-Yr Bond Yield closed at 2.94, down -0.0200 points or -0.68% over the past week. YTD the 10-Yr Bond Yield is up 22.50%.

Sources: Dynamic, Global News