flyer61 wrote:Salvor, would you like to make a comment on Bank of Montreal's results versus the others.
I haven't really got much to say about the other banks. If I don't own shares in a company, then unless I'm thinking about buying some shares I don't pay all that much attention to a company's results. Especially banks, where the accounts are often extremely complicated (especially if they have insurance arms). If it's operating in the same sector as a share that I own then I may look at the headline results. Nothing jumped out at me from the headlines in the recent reporting season.
I picked Bank of Montreal over the other "Big Five" banks primarily because it has paid a dividend in every year since 1829, longer than any other Canadian company. To me that signals a conservative corporate culture. Its board of directors aren't going to want to be the ones to cut or not pay a dividend. A company with a similar dividend record in which I used to own shares is Procter & Gamble, which has paid a dividend in every year since 1890. P&G's directors guard its dividend track record.
I already knew that Canadian banks are better regulated than British banks and that they put a lot of importance upon paying dividends, especially as they have a large number of private investors who rely on their dividends (somewhere between 40% and 50% of the shares in the Big Five are owned by private investors).
The article below mentions about the provisions the big Canadian banks have made in last week's results. Bank of Montreal has made one of the largest increases in provisions. Whether this is because they have made riskier loans or are much more conservative about provisions is open to discussion; I'm going with "much more conservative".
"Shareholders learned that TD's provisions for credit losses soared to nearly $3.22 billion from $633 million during the same period a year ago. Earlier in the day, CIBC said it had put aside $1.41 billion, up from the $255 million it reported in its previous second quarter. Royal Bank of Canada said earlier this week that its credit-loss provisions amounted to $2.83 billion, up 564 per cent from $426 million in the same quarter last year.
Bank of Montreal's reached $1.11 billion, up 531 per cent from $176 million, National Bank of Canada's hit $504 million, up from the $84 million, and Bank of Nova Scotia's totalled nearly $1.85 billion, more than doubling from $873 million a year earlier."
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/td-bank-reports-1-5b-111046890.html
Sorry I can't be of more help